Wesleyan University
The Honors College
Homer, or Another Poet of the Same Name:
Four Translations of the Iliad
by
Jonathan Joseph Loya Spira
Class of 2016
A thesis submitted to the
faculty of Wesleyan University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Degree of Bachelor of Arts
with Departmental Honors in Classics
Middletown, Connecticut
April, 2016
I owe thanks for this thesis and to my graduation to my mother and father, who
made me into the person I am through a loving dedication to the numerous
thousands of things I have decided are my ‘true calling.’ I would not just be a
different person without them, I genuinely do not think I would have survived
myself. To my sister, whom I trust with everything important. I don’t think I’ll ever
have a friend quite like her. To my advisor, Professor Andy, who has lived through
many poorly written drafts, week in and week out. I owe him a debt of gratitude
for trusting in me to bring it all together here, at the end of all things.
To my first friend, Michael, and to my first friend in college, Sarah. To
Gabe, who I have lived with for thousands of miles, only 40 of them being
excessive. Frequently, they are the three who keep me together as a person, which
is to say that they are the people who I fall apart on the most. To my friends of 50
Home: Sam, Liz, Adi, Johnny, Sarah: I try every day to be as good a friend to you
as you are to me; and to those outside our quiet street: Mads, Avi, Jason; and the
Classics friends I have made who have defined my senior year: Shoynes, Beth,
Sharper, Jackson, Mackenzie, Maria; to Ward, who I love like a brother, and to
Professor Visvardi, the professor I did not have the first three years and am
incredibly grateful to have had since. And finally to Hayley, with whom I go on
great adventures, and without whom this thesis would have been done two weeks
earlier.
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff–and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
–Vladimir Nabokov
Τυφλὸς ἀνήρ, οἰεῖ δὲ Χίῳ ἔνι παιπαλοέσσῃ.
Τοῦ πᾶσαι μετόπισθεν ἀριστεύσουσιν ἀοιδαί.
–Homeric Hymn to Apollo
Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................. 5
Homer Speaks .............................................................................................................. 7
Metonymic Signifiers ......................................................................................................... 10
Rage ............................................................................................................................ 14
Translating Rage ................................................................................................................ 15
The Shield of Achilles ................................................................................................ 21
Lattimore’s Diagram .......................................................................................................... 25
Logue and Peterson & O’Hare’s Thematic Translations ................................................. 30
Green’s Ekphrasis .............................................................................................................. 35
Death and Prophecy; Translation as Analysis.......................................................... 41
Words Do Things .............................................................................................................. 51
Words Functioning in the Iliad.......................................................................................... 56
Achilles and Patroclus: Creating Sexuality .............................................................. 59
Ancient Greek Pederasty, and Achilles and Patroclus .................................................... 59
Reception of Achilles and Patroclus Outside Ancient Greece ........................................ 67
Fish and the Interpretive Community .............................................................................. 69
Translation Recording Interpretive Structures ................................................................ 74
Peterson & O’Hare and a Gay Achilles ............................................................................ 78
Logue and Achilles’ Emotions ........................................................................................... 81
Peter Green and A Shift Back ........................................................................................... 86
Conclusions ................................................................................................................ 90
Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 91
Introduction
This thesis is interested in three separate, but interrelated questions: how do
different translators approach the Iliad, what is the methodology by which
translations replicate the Iliad, and how do translations reflect their own time
period in showing an ancient poem? My first question is a constant concern, and
from answering that question throughout Chapter 2-5, I gather the evidence with
which I answer the second and third question.
I primarily study 4 translations, though there are references to other outside
translations: Richmond Lattimore’s Iliad (2011), Peter Green’s The Iliad, Lisa
Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s An Iliad (2014), and Christopher Logue’s War Music
(2016). The first two translations, line-by-line and nearly word-for-word
translations by classicists, need little introduction, as I am sure my readers will take
them to be legitimate sources for analysis a priori. An Iliad and War Music, however,
require some discussion.
The former is a play which is largely based off of Robert Fagles’ translation;
Peterson & O’Hare indicate, by a change in indentation in the script, where they
do not use Fagles’ text. Most of the lines which I have quoted are from those areas
not from Fagles’ text The play itself is a one-man play, where the only speaker is
the Poet who tells the story of the Iliad, occasionally acting out characters himself.
Secondly, Logue is well known for not speaking any Ancient Greek—he bases his
translation off of other translations of the Iliad. In such a way, both of these works
may not, strictly speaking, be called “translations,” like the first two. But there are
still substantive reasons why they are worthy of study in this translation based
thesis. First, I am not convinced that knowledge of Ancient Greek is necessary to
make a translation of a work which was in Ancient Greece—a belief like that strike
me as indicative of a haughtiness which imperfect, dictionary-bound classicists
enjoy giving themselves. Moreover, even though both works may not be the same
kind of strict translation like Green and Lattimore has, they both contain elements
which the study of translation would shed light on. Ultimately, I would ask my
readers to give me the patience to demonstrate, through my study of Logue and
Peterson & O’Hare, the worth of studying them with translation theory.
Before I begin my thesis, there are a few minor points to make. In general, I
do not use Greek text without accompanying translations, but, when supplying
such translations would become tedious and redundant, I use Latinized Greek.
When a translation of Greek is written out without a citation to an author, the
translation is my own. This will normally be indicated by footnote. Finally, I have
chosen to use the most Latinized, commonly used version of most names: Achilles,
Patroclus, Ajax, rather than Achilleus or Akhilleus, etc. I use these names simply
out of convenience and their general acceptance.
Homer Speaks
Our teachers weren’t fluent in Latin and Greek and could not make us fluent. The
ancient languages were not real the way French was; we were like holiday makers
with phrase-book Spanish trying to read Lorca or Neruda aloud; but no one told us
how silly we sounded.
––Frederick Ahl
Translation is stipulated to be, in this thesis, the creation of an equivalent
form in one language from another language.1 If one wishes to translate the Iliad, or
even worse, if one wishes to discuss translations of the Iliad, one must first discover
the text of the Iliad. Initially, this task seems simple. Any translation requires a
Source Text ("ST") and a Target Text ("TT").2 The source text is the original,
composed work, whereas the target text is generated from the source text. So what
differentiates a translated work from a composed work at the most basic level? To
state the question with examples, what differentiates L'Etranger, written by Albert
Camus, from The Stranger, translated by Matthew Ward, beyond the fact that one is
in French and the other is in English? The most obvious difference is the
compositional limitations placed on the creators of both works. L'Etranger was
created in the mind of Albert Camus and could have been about anything, or as
Michel Foucault writes, the original work has the freedom to generate its own
“unfolded exteriority....[I]t is...a question of creating a space."3 Camus, within this
space, has unquestionable and complete authority as the author. Camus does not
1
See Jakobson 2000
2. Munday Translation
3. Foucault "What is an Author?"
have to contend with shades of possible narratives or possible characters. His novel
is defined in positivist terms by what is present, rather than what could have been
present. When Meursault shoots a man on the beach, the reader may wonder why
Meursault does not simply walk away but it would be nonsensical for the reader to
ask the question to doubt Camus’ authorial power to decide that Meursault shoots
someone. Ultimately Meursault shot a man on the beach because Camus wanted
him to do so. The translator of L’Etranger, however, cannot make that decision so
freely.
The Stranger, a translation of L'Etranger, is defined by L'Etranger. This
relationship permeates the text at every level; all structures in the translated text
are defined by their relationship to structures within the source text, from the
largest plot elements to the smallest grammatical questions. For example, a
translator might decide to remove the conversation with the chaplain, but to make
such a decision constitutes a "removal," and a reader familiar with the original
would mark this change as deviating from L'Etranger. If Camus had decided to
remove the chaplain scene from the novel before publishing it, no one would mark
the text as missing a chaplain scene. If the translator of L'Etranger were to write a
version of L'Etranger in which Meursault lives in apartheid South Africa, rather
than in Algeria, the story would be marked as different; every action which
Meursault takes would be re-evaluated in this new context. Even if a translator
does not seek to make any noticeable changes, the translator is still be forced to
make decisions which would mark the translated text as different from the source
text. From the very first word, 'l'etranger,' the translator would be forced to mark
their translation. Should "l'etranger" be translated as "the stranger" (as Matthew
Ward translates the title) or "the foreigner"? In French, it means both at the same
time. For a translator to choose one of these translations, however, says something
about the novel; is Meursault merely a 'stranger,' or is the fact that he is Algerian
so notable that the novel must be called The Foreigner? Which translation the
translator chooses introduces a new specificity of meaning which ‘l’etranger’ does
not give the original title. The authority of the translated work, therefore, is not
self-contained, like Camus’ authority in L’Etranger. The translated work exists
instead at the behest of its source text.
Therefore, one cannot merely look at translations of the Iliad without
looking at the source text: the Greek Iliad. When one discusses the Iliad, one is
inextricably discussing the oral poetic tradition which surrounded the text.
Rhapsodes, travelling bards, maintained the tradition by giving performances of
the Iliad, where they extemporaneously composed the Iliad while performing it. The
tradition consists of formulas: words, phrases, epithets, lines, and even speeches, all
of which a bard had memorized and at his disposal at any given time.4 The bard
used the traditional formula according the strict meter of Homeric poetry. These
formulas, however, were not just metrical fillers, but, rather, had distinct, large,
and powerful traditional meanings. These traditional meanings were, in the
vocabulary of John Miles Foley, “metonymically engaged.”
4
For more on Homeric composition and Homeric Transcription, see Nagy 1998,
2004, 2008, 2009; West Homerus Ilias 1998, Studies in the Text and Transmission 2001;
Edwards, Homer: Poet of the Iliad 1990; FINISH THIS FOOTNOTE TOMORROW.
Metonymic Signifiers
I suggest that the Iliad utilizes a metonymic signification system, as in pars
pro toto. John Miles Foley has expounded this theory throughout his career, but
most especially in Immanent Art and the Oral Theory. He begins with a basic, fuzzy
dichotomy: written texts confer meaning, while oral traditional texts inherit
meaning.5 Conferred meaning is a method in which the highest priority is placed
upon "a writer's personal manipulation of original or inherited materials, rewarding
the work that strikes out boldly in a new direction by providing a perspective
uniquely its own, memorable because it is new, fresh, or best of all, inimitable."6
Inherited meaning, on the other hand, "depends primarily on elements and strategies
that were in place long before the execution of the present version or text."7 The
difference between these two terms is hazy; written works also have inherent
meaning while oral poets clearly also innovate parts of their tales. On the whole,
however, the "traditional work will lean much more heavily on encoding and
expression through inherently meaningful forms."8 These inherently meaningful
forms are certain word structures which have “fields of reference much larger than
the single line, passage, or even text in which they occur. This idiom is liberating
5. Foley 1991, 8.
6. Ibid, 8.
7. Ibid, 8.
8. Ibid, 8.
rather than imprisoning, centrifugal rather than centripetal, explosively
connotative rather than claustrophobically clichéd."9 Traditional words with
inherent meaning in an oral tradition, therefore, do not refer to their nominal idea
but rather to an entire outside tradition which "crucially includes an extra-textual
dimension uniquely the domain of oral traditional art."10
Foley refers to this process as metonymy, wherein a single part of something
stands for the whole.11 Formula in the Iliad is one of these types of metonymic
signifiers. The actual literal meaning of a given formula is far less important than
the secondary inherited meaning which it stands for metonymically. The formula
then is not stating a fact, such as Achilles is swift-footed, but is rather introducing an
entire tradition, pars pro toto. Instead of a wooden formula, Foley sees a dynamic
and responsive plethora of meanings at the poet’s fingertips: “Noun-epithet phrases
like 'grey-eyed Athena' or 'purple-cheeked ships' refer not just—or even
principally—to the goddess's eyes or the ships’ hue, but rather the phrases use
those characteristic yet nominal details to project holistic traditional concepts. Such
synecdoche extend the fundamental arbitrariness of language at the same that it
extends its significative 'reach'."12
It is difficult to discuss this theory in the abstract, and so an example is
necessary. One of Achilles’ main epithets appears in Book 1.57:
9. Ibid, 7.
10. Ibid.
11
Technically, I believe a pars pro toto is actually referred to as ‘synecdoche,’ but
Foley prefers ‘metonymy.’
12. Foley 1997, 64-5
οἳ δ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὖν ἤγερθεν ὁμηγερέες τε γένοντο,
τοῖσι δ᾽ ἀνιστάμενος μετέφη πόδας ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεύς
When they had assembled and gathered together,
Swift-footed Achilles, rising among them, spoke:
In this scene, Achilles is about to speak in front of the troops to ask for a
soothsayer, who will detail Agamemnon’s insult against Apollo, which will spur
him to take Briseis from Achilles, which will bring out the rage of Achilles, etc. At
this moment, Achilles is beginning the narrative arc that will define his role in the
Iliad. Rather than being irrelevant, podas okus Akhilleus brings to mind Achilles’
famous swift feet. This epithet, in my view, would bring up two clear images to the
listener’s mind: first, the race around Ilion when Achilles chased Hector and
eventually slew him, and secondly, Paris slaying Achilles in revenge by shooting
him with a poisoned arrow near his foot. Therefore, in using this epithet here, the
poet is linking the moment Achilles begins his narrative arc with the end of that
narrative arc. This epithet is used 29 more times throughout the Iliad, and in each
instance, it corresponds to a major location of the plot of Achilles; there are, in fact,
only 4 usages of podas okus Akhilleus outside of Books 1, 9, 18, and 21-24, all of
which feature the major plot points of Achilles: the initial quarrel with
Agamemnon, rejecting Agamemnon’s offer, Patroclus’ death, the fight with Hector,
and the return of Hector’s body to Priam. In each case, the poet is reminding his
listeners of what Achilles will do and how this conflict will end. The poet does this,
however, with just the power of metonymic signification.
I hope to have laid three theoretical foundations in this chapter: translations
are marked based on their relationship with their source material, the Iliad is
constantly recalling an oral tradition, and the Iliad recalls its oral tradition by
metonymic signification, whereby formulaic phrases bring to mind far more than
just their literal meaning. In the next chapter, I will begin analyzing translations,
starting with the word mēnis.
Rage
While seeking revenge, dig two graves.
––Douglas Horton
My object in this chapter is to see how much, if any, of the oral tradition is
conveyed in translations of the Iliad. I will begin with the beginning of the poem,
both for the sake of analyzing the first word in the poem, mēnis, and as a functional
example of my methodology.
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
Sing goddess of the wrath/rage/anger of son of Peleus Achilles13
Before moving on to the English translations and showing how they manage the
traditional meanings in this passage, it would be useful to discuss the line itself. The
Greek line covers three concepts: rage, singing to a goddess, and Achilles’
parentage. I will be focusing on the first concept: rage. Mēnis is used in the Iliad 18
times and is formulaically used 5 times as the first word of a sentence in the
accusative mēnin.14 Mēnis, outside the Iliad, is used by Pindar, Aeschylus, and
Hesiod, as the equivalent of the English words “rage” or “anger.”15 In the Iliad,
13
Translated by me
1.75, 5.444, 16.711, 19.35, and 19.75.
15
Olympian Odes 6.20ff, Agamemnon 140ff, Shield of Heracles 21. There are many
examples (Euripides, Herodotus, some Pindar, some Aeschylus, etc.) where mēnis
refers to godly rage, just as I argue the Iliad does. Many of the usages of later
authors do so in connection with the Iliad, however, so it is difficult tell if these
14
mēnis is mainly used to describe divine anger, not human anger; menis is primarily
possessed by the gods.16 The 5 times mēnis is not used to describe the rage of a god
are the five times the word is used to describe the rage of Achilles. Therefore, by
using the word mēnis in connection with Achilles, the poet indicates to his audience
how godlike the rage of Achilles is – a grand, unstoppable rage. The word mēnis,
like podas ōkus Akhilleus, accomplishes its extended meaning by metonymic
signification. By utilizing such an extended meaning, the poet demonstrates to his
audience with a single word, “mēnis,” that the rage of Achilles is unique among the
rage of men, and thus, Achilles, who possesses such a divine and godly rage, must
be different from other men. The grandeur of such a signification prepares the
listener, setting the tone and theme of the poem. The beauty and complexity of
Homer’s traditional metonymic signification is that the poet does this using just one
word—mēnis.
Translating Rage
Lattimore
Green
Peterson
&
O’Hare
Sing goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus17
Wrath, goddess, sing of Achilles Pēleus’ son’s
calamitous wrath…18
This is the story of the Trojan War. And two great fighters—Achilles and
Hector—
(Imploring.) Ohhhhh…..Muses….
RAGE!
later usages are just references to Homeric mēnis or independent meanings on their
own.
16
Cf. 1.75, 5.34, 5.178, 5.444, etc. This metonymic meaning has been noted by Kirk
1985, Pulleyn 2000, Jones 2003, among others.
17
Lattimore 2011, 1.1
18
Green 2015, 1.1
Logue
Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles19
Picture the east Aegean Sea by night…
A naked man…
Kneel[s] among those panes, beggar his arms, and say[s]
“Source, hear my voice.
That Shepherd of the Clouds has seen me trashed
Surely as if He sent a hand to shoo
The army into one, and then, before its eyes,
Painted my body with fresh Trojan excrement…”20
Richmond Lattimore brings in no equivalent of metonymic signification and
instead presents the formula on its own. Mēnis is translated as “anger,” and in every
other case where mēnis appears, Lattimore translates it the same way, whether the
rage belongs to Achilles or to a god. 21 Moreover, other words which describe the
rage of other characters like Agamemnon, Diomedes, or Ajax, such as menos in
1.103, are all also translated by Lattimore as “anger.” Unlike in Homer, Lattimore’s
goddess sings of an “anger” which is undifferentiated from any other kind of
“anger,” since all sorts of other “anger” words are translated the same way. By
translating every word the same way each time it appears, Lattimore replicates
Homer’s formulaic repetition but, paradoxically, does not achieve the same
diversity in meaning that Homer accomplishes. It would take an impossibly
talented reader to notice, having read Lattimore’s Iliad, that certain terms are used
19
Peterson and O'Hare 2014, 25
Logue 2003, 5ff
21
Lattimore 5.31-4: “Ares…shall we not leave the Trojans and Chains to
struggle…while we two give ground together and avoid Zeus’ anger?” and Lattimore
1.74: “You have bidden me, Achilleus beloved of Zeus, to explain to you this anger
of Apollo the lord who strikes from afar,” among others.” For gods, 5.113: “Among
the men far the best was Telamonian Aias while Achilleus stayed angry” and
Lattimore 12.10: “So long as Hektor was still alive, and Achilleus was angry.”
20
specifically to describe divine anger and Achilles’ anger. Homer’s original audience
could understand the extended implications of mēnis because they would have been
trained and expected to see such subtle meanings in the poet’s repeated
vocabulary.22 The modern English reader, however, would have to look very close
to realize the complicated shades of meaning in the usages of “rage” in Lattimore.
What Lattimore ends up doing, then, rather than translating the formulaic meaning
of mēnis, is translate the literal meaning “rage,” without translating the metonymic
signified meaning, “godly rage.”
Peter Green, in contrast to Lattimore, attempts to express the uniqueness of
mēnis without changing its meaning. By placing “wrath,” a word which denotes
“extreme anger, typical of a god,”23 at the front of the sentence, contrary to typical
English word order, Green’s choice of syntax compels the reader to recognize that
the “wrath” of Achilles is somehow special.24 In such a way, even though he does
not add any words or expand upon the meaning, Green communicates to the
reader that Achilles has wrath (by the meaning of the words themselves) and, at
the same time, that his wrath seems to be special (by the strange syntax of the
sentence). The two meanings that Green provides in this line are synonymous with
the metonymic signification that Homer employs. Finally, Green achieves his
signification of “wrath” immediately; the reader realizes at the moment they read
the first line that Achilles’ wrath is special. In Greek, likewise, the listener
22
See Lord 1960 for descriptions of audience knowledge and preperation.
OED s.v.
24
Cf. Eco 2003 for differing methodologies with similar effects in translation.
23
metonymically recognizes mēnis to represent godlike wrath the moment the listener
hears it. However, Green’s sentence, due to its strange syntax, is not as easy to
understand instantly as the clear Greek. He alleviates some of this
incomprehensibility by repeating “wrath” in line 2, but even so, the first line is not
easily readable. Some incomprehensibility may be, in translating between cultures
so far removed from each other, the price for recovering the extending meaning of
mēnis.
Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, in An Iliad, mute the traditional nature of
mēnis. The actor on stage screams out the first word of the Iliad, translated as
“RAGE,” assuring that the audience will understand that the upcoming play will
focus closely on the “rage of Achilles.” However, unlike every other translation
here, Peterson & O’Hare do not include any other instance of mēnis in their text.
Achilles’ mēnis is not just the scariest, grandest, or most stubborn of all the mēnis of
the heroes; in Peterson & O’Hare’s play, it is the only mēnis. In such a way, the
reader is left with the impression of a story only about “two great fighters—Achilles
and Hector.” The traditional nature of the word mēnis is conveyed in the Greek text
by repetition (otherwise, Achilles’ rage would not be noteworthy), but since
Peterson & O’Hare remove that repetition, the word “RAGE” is not so much
traditional as descriptive. Simply put, Peterson & O’Hare make an Achilles who
has great and terrible rage, but since it is not compared to a god’s rage, it appears
to be terrifying but little else. The reduction of mēnis to just “rage” is symptomatic
of Peterson and O’Hare’s overall compression of the story, which is in part
purposeful, and in part necessitated by the constraints of the modern theater.
Christopher Logue begins the poem with a description of the Greek forces,
but, then, startlingly, makes Achilles into the Poet, putting into Achilles’ mouth the
opening line of the Iliad, translated as “Source, hear my voice.”25 There are two
important features in Logue’s translation of the first line of the Iliad here: first, thea
is translated as “source,” rather than “goddess” or “muse,” and secondly, the
Source, instead of being asked to aeide (“sing”), hears Achilles who speaks in place
of the poet.26 The Source which Achilles refers to is quickly revealed to be Thetis,
who is Achilles’ mother, and therefore, “the source” of Achilles. Achilles tells her
that he has been deeply insulted by Agamemnon, as if he had been painted “with
fresh Trojan excrement.”27 After he has spoken, Thetis asks him “Why tears,
Achilles?” He then goes on to narrate the rest of the proemium, from the capture of
Chryseis (called “Cryzia”) to the plague inflicted by Apollo (“Mousegod”). Thetis
then asks Achilles “Then what?” The narrator takes over the narration from that
point on: “Their early pietà dissolves, and we move ten days back.”28
Logue therefore transforms the proemium of the Iliad from an invocation to
a dialogue between Achilles and Thetis. Their dialogue, in turn, is a discussion of
the source of the mēnis of Achilles (“Why tears?”); and because of their discussion,
the narrator of the poem, after being prompted again by Thetis’ “Then what?” tells
the story of Achilles’ rage, which is the rest of War Music. Whereas the Greek has a
25
Logue 2003, 5.
Thea – “goddess” – is nearly universally understood to mean Muse; see also
Pulleyn 2000, Martin’s introduction in Lattimore 2011, Kirk 1985, Jones 2003, and
Postlethwaite 2000. Logue is likely exploiting the ambiguity of the word by having
it refer to Thetis instead.
27
Ibid. 5ff.
28
Ibid. 10
26
Poet invoking the Muse to sing of the mēnis of Achilles, which brings pain and
death to the Greek soldiers and heroes, Logue gives Achilles a mēnis which directly
brings about the story which is then told. War Music, in effect, becomes a story
prompted by Achilles’ rage and weeping. Achilles’ rage, in Logue’s translation, is
not unique because it is godlike in character, as the text of the Iliad implies, but
rather is special because it is meta-poetic. Mēnis is, in the Greek, exactly that same
motivator for the poem which is then told; the poet asks mēnin aeide thea, which
prompts the rest of the Iliad; in War Music, Thetis asks “Then what?” to prompt the
Narrator to explain the source of his rage, which is the text of War Music.
In this short chapter, I hope to have shown the variety of methods that
translators have available to them to make equivalences to the original Greek.
Lattimore, in representing the literal level of the text without showing the
metonymic level, only shows that Achilles is angry, but does not convey the godlike quality of that rage. Green, using the syntax of the sentence, makes the wrath
of Achilles especially prominent, which is parallel to the notion of Achilles having a
divine rage, though not exactly equivalent. Peterson & O’Hare isolate the rage to
just Achilles, which is indicative of their reduction of the play. Finally, Logue goes
in a direction no other translator does, making the rage of Achilles the impetus for
the telling of his poem.
The Shield of Achilles
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
––W.B. Yeats
The Shield of Achilles sequence occurs at the end of Book 18, after Achilles
decides to re-join the battle to avenge the death of Patroclus. Since Hector has
taken Achilles’ armor (itself a symbolic act29), Thetis, Achilles’ mother, journeys to
Olympus and asks Hephaestus to make her son new armor and a new shield.30
Hephaestus readily agrees, setting out to his forge to create the godly armaments.
The poet devotes nearly the next hundred and sixty lines to a detailed description
of the decorations as Hephaestus hammers them out. Objects described by their
manufacturing process are common in Homeric poetry, such as the description of
Pandaros’ bow (Il. 4.105-11), Odysseus’ brooch (Od. 19.228-31), and Odysseus’
raft (Od. 5.244-61).31 However, the description of the Shield of Achilles seen at the
end of Book 18 surpasses all other similar scenes in length, complexity, and unity.
The description of the Shield is divided into seven parts: an overview, a city at
peace, a city at war, a farmer’s year, shepherding scenes, a dance, and the river of
Oceanus. In the overview, heavenly bodies appear to surround the shield, but are
still inside the outer ring of Ocean (16.607-08). Beneath them is depicted the
Earth, upon which the other scenes will take place. The sun, moon, and numerous
29
See Edwards 1991, 139ff.
Iliad 18.368ff
31
See Edwards 1990 83-4
30
stars are described as well (16.486-9).32 Two cities are then shown, one at peace
and one at war. Within the peaceful city there is a wedding and the peaceful
resolution of a conflict:
ἄμφω δ' ἱέσθην ἐπὶ ἴστορι πεῖραρ ἑλέσθαι
Both men placed for an arbitrator, to achieve an end.
The two men’s dispute centers on the correct dispensation of poinē, or blood money,
that one man owes the other, since the would-be debtor killed the other man’s
brother. Although the Greek is ambiguous, it appears that the slayer has offered
compensation to the other man, who refused to take it. They each then seek
independent arbitrators (elders), to decide their case. The impartiality of the
arbitrators is assured by a prize of two talents of gold to the elder who will have
delivered the fairest verdict.33 Though in actuality such a system might not produce
the most unbiased results, the Shield, taken at face value, is attempting to depict a
world where judicial decisions are made fairly, justly, and peacefully.
Justice, with the power to reach a peaceful resolution, is found nowhere
else in the Iliad. Its absence is especially felt in Book 1, where Achilles’ anger over a
disagreement with Agamemnon is not averted by any independent arbitrator. Since
Agamemnon acts as chief justice of the army, his decision is seen by Achilles as
unacceptable and biased, unlike the city at peace. Ajax, in fact, compares
Agamemnon and Achilles’ feud to a dispute concerning a blood price, “A man
accepts recompense even from his brother’s or his own son’ murderer—while the
32
For Homeric astronomy, see Dicks 1985
Overall, I would not call this a fantastic method to assure judge impartiality, but
the Shield clearly is supposed to depict a well working judicial system.
33
killer pays a steep price, and then says in his home town, and the kinsman’s
emotional passion is duly tempered by the blood-price he has received. (9.632ff)”34
Therefore, there is an implicit comparison between between the world of the
Achaeans, where the resolution of Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s argument is seen as
unjust, and the world of the Shield, where the argument between two individuals
has a just outcome. The world of the Shield, therefore, is foreign to the world of the
Achaeans.
The second city, the city at war, is equally, and perhaps surprisingly, unlike
the Iliad. In the city at war, two armies besiege a city. 35 The leaders of the besieging
forces are shown debating,
ἠὲ διαπραθέειν ἢ ἄνδιχα πάντα δάσασθαι
Whether to destroy everything or to divide everything in two.
In Book 22, Hector thinks to himself to propose the same offer to Achilles, to
divide everything (women, slaves, gold) in two, but decides against it, reasoning
that such a solution is impossible, since Achilles would be more likely to kill an
unarmed Hector than to negotiate with him.36 Considering what Achilles says to
Hector shortly thereafter – “Hector, speak not to me, curse you, your pacts. There
are no pacts between lions and men” (22.261-62) – it seems that Hector’s decision
to meet Achilles outside the Skaian Gate armed was a prudent choice. Therefore,
even the city at war is beyond Achilles’ world; the war which Achilles fights cannot
34
Green 2015,
Jones 2003 and Markoe 1985 argue that it is one army divided into two halves as
a consequence of the two-dimensional representation likely imagined by the poet.
36
Book 22.111ff
35
be resolved by any peaceful means. The final three scenes on the Shield, farming,
both on a small plot and at a larger estate, the shepherding scene, and the dance are
also far outside of the Trojan War and the narration of the Iliad.
Each of the scenes depicted on the Shield represents a happier world, away
from the irresolvable and interminable Trojan War, which Achilles will never
experience again because he is fated to die. The scenes on the Shield are not empty
of suffering, but they are not scenes of suffering. Rather, the shield depicts a happy
world upon which suffering intrudes. Oliver Taplin observes that with the Shield,
“Homer has allowed us temporarily to stand back from the poem and see [war] in
its place—like a detail from the reproduction of a painting—within a larger
landscape, a landscape which is usually blotted from sight by the all-consuming
narrative in the foreground.”37 Taplin goes on to argue that the Shield makes the
audience “contemplate the life that Achilles has renounced and the civilization that
Troy will never regain. The two finest things in the Iliad—Achilles and Troy—will
never again enjoy the existence portrayed on the shield: that is the price of war and
of heroic glory. The shield of Achilles brings home the loss, the cost of the events of
the Iliad.”38 I do not disagree with this analysis, but, as Taplin himself notes, his
argument makes Homer into more of a pacifist than others might argue.39 I would
37
Taplin 1985,
12
38
39
Ibid. 15
See Weil 1940
instead rephrase Taplin’s argument along the lines of the metonymic significations
which I have been discussing so far. The Shield of Achilles becomes a symbol of
what Achilles will not experience. Achilles never will again live in a city, settle for
peace, own an estate, farm, dance, drink wine with friends at home, or do anything
else pleasant; instead, he is fated now to die on the battlefield. The poet puts the
scenes of happiness which Achilles will never experience on Achilles’ own Shield to
remind the listener every time that Achilles uses his Shield of the cost that Achilles
has paid for his “undying glory.” 40 The artistry of the Shield is in the reversal of its
literal usage (a weapon of war) and its symbolic meaning (the impending loss of life
of its bearer). It becomes, in such a way, a tragic symbol.
Lattimore’s Diagram
The way translators represent the Shield is consistent with how they deal
with the less complicated issue of mēnis. The Shield presents two unique difficulties
for translators: first, its meaning, purpose, and artistry (essentially, the whole
reason the Shield is in the text) is dependent on the Shield’s reference to other
passages in the poem. Secondly, the Shield is an example of ekphrasis, which is a
type of poetry that is relatively unfamiliar to modern readers. Lattimore, Peterson
& O’Hare, and Logue primarily attempt to resolve the first difficulty and ignore the
second; Green, on the other hand, primarily attempts to resolve the second.
40
Achilles will use his Shield at 22.290 to block Hector’s spear, sealing Hector’s
fate.
Lattimore gives a straightforward and exact translation of each section. The
quarrel between the litigants moves toward resolution when “Both then made for
an arbitrator, to have a decision.” Lattimore renders “peirar helesthai” as the more
specific “to have a decision,” rather than “to come to an end.” The translation is
both reasonably literal and reasonably interpretative. As I have argued above,
however, the passage’s focus on judicial decision making recalls the lack of a
judicial overview in the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon (and, to a lesser
extent, between Achilles and Hector and Achilles and Priam). Lattimore attempts
to go further than just replicating Homer’s general meaning. As I have noted, he
also seeks to replicate Homer’s syntax and repeated usages, generally by
translating a formula identically every time it appears. In most passages in the Iliad
which are thematically linked, there is also repeated formulaic language (see
Chapter Three: Death and Prophecy). Here, however, the descriptions of the
Shield and the passages to which they refer do not share repeated formulaic
imagery. (I will call the scenes which the Shield refers to as “the referent passages”
from now on.) The lack of repeated formulaic language is strange for Homer, since
it forces his audience to link the Shield to its referent passages by the subject
matter alone. Lattimore, ever faithful, replicates that lack of repeated formula in his
translation. When Lattimore writes that two armies at war considered a plan to
“share between both sides the property and all the possessions the lovely citadel
held hard within it,”41 the English reader can certainly relate that passage to
41
Lattimore 2011, 410
Lattimore’s Hector, who considers a plan for peace in the Trojan War where the
Trojans would “divide up all that is hidden within the city, and take an oath
thereafter for the Trojans in conclave not to hide anything away, but distribute all
of it, as much as the lovely citadel keeps guarded within it.”42 Though “lovely
citadel” is repeated, the passages feature no other formulaic repetition. The rest of
the Shield features the same lack of repeated formulaic imagery with its referent
passages.
Lattimore seems in the Shield of Achilles to be doing an extraordinary job
of creating an equivalent to Homer’s technique. But what is not clear is whether
such a translation is understood by the audience in an equivalent way. Since the
perspectives and understandings of the audience determine some (if not all) of the
meaning of a work, understanding how the Greek and modern day audience
interact with literature is essential. Though Lattimore has replicated Homer’s
structure, that does not mean that Lattimore’s audience will have an equivalent
response to Lattimore’s translation as Homer’s audience had to the Iliad.
Discussing audience reception in the Classical world is difficult because of our lack
of evidence, so I will start with a basic question: “Does Lattimore’s audience
interpret the Shield of Achilles scene differently than Homer’s audience interpreted
the Shield of Achilles?”
The answer is yes. We cannot know exactly how Homer’s audience
encountered the Iliad, but we can know some very general things, which is enough
42
Ibid., 460
to conclude that a modern reader understands the Shield scene differently than the
ancient one. First, the original is oral, not written, so any references that Homer
makes in the Shield to other parts of the Iliad require the audience to remember
other parts of the Iliad and then connect the Shield to their memories. Lattimore’s
audience, meanwhile, can see (physically) one passage and then flip pages and see
the passage which it appears to refer to. The notable distinction is not the between
difficulty of memorization versus reference, because we cannot know how difficult
Homer’s audience found memorizing vast poems (they were certainly much better
at it than we are), but in the task itself. Homer’s Shield refers to something in the
memory and mind of the listener, while Lattimore’s translation refers to a passage
which can be viewed repeatedly. Homer’s audience, in effect, actively participates
in the intertextual references of the Shield scene because they must remember
everything the Shield refers to, while Lattimore’s audience can passively see, with
our various marginalia and highlighting, the structure of the Shield scene through
repeated viewings. Secondly, since it is clear that Homer’s composition is based on
formulaic repetition, we can reasonably conclude that his audience understood the
poem based upon that same formulaic repetition. There are, of course, many
differences between the ancient audience’s reaction to Homeric poetry and the
modern reaction to Lattimore’s poem, such as public performance versus private
reading, religious meanings, cultural values,, etc., but suffice it to say, an oral text
will be understood by its original, oral audience differently than it would be by a
literate audience. This leads to the question: how differently do the two audiences
experience the text?
I think it is impossible to know, and a discussion would likely be speculation. I can
only say now that it appears clear that the Homeric audience understood the text of
the Iliad differently than a modern audience does. Therefore, since Lattimore
replicates the structure of the text, but the audience today understands that
structure differently, it does not appear that a reader will experience the text of the
Shield passage the same as a Homeric listener would have. If one believes that
translation is about giving the new audience the equivalent experience of the
original audience, then Lattimore’s translation is not a “true” equivalent.
But Lattimore’s Shield of Achilles does parallel Homer’s Shield of Achilles in
composition, if not in the way his audience receives it. It is a notable
accomplishment. Lattimore’s Shield is deeply useful precisely because it parallels
Homer’s form without attempting to parallel its reception (which is a risky
endeavor). I believe such a parallelism is why scholars so vehemently prefer
Lattimore over other translators; if the reader of Lattimore understands Homeric
poetics very deeply, they can easily ‘read through’ Lattimore and see the inner
workings of the Ancient Greek. Lattimore’s translation works then more like a
blueprint or a description of Homer’s Shield of Achilles. Lattimore shows his
readers all the important scenes and how they connect to other scenes, but he does
not invite his reader into the story as Homer does to his Greek audience. Lattimore
is less “doing” art, than “showing” art. To avoid sounding too meta-poetic,
Lattimore’s translation of the Shield of Achilles functions like a diagram of the
original poem. Perhaps Lattimore, then, has not ‘translated’ the Shield of Achilles
for a modern audience, but ‘reproduced’ the Shield, like how a photograph shows a
painting but can never give the viewer the experience of being in front of it. Yet
even that, to produce a picture of the Iliad, seems extraordinary.
Logue and Peterson & O’Hare’s Thematic Translations
Christopher Logue, on the other hand, intends his translation of the Shield
to capture the feeling which he believes the reader should experience, regardless of
whether the technique Logue uses to achieve that is represented in the Greek. In
fact, Logue does not include the ekphrastic scenes on the Shield. Instead, after
Patroclus’ death Chapter 18 ends, and Chapter 19 begins with the delivery of the
armor by Thetis. Although other translators also include the scene, Logue alone
makes it speak for the Shield in general, so it is worth special consideration as an
account of the Shield passage, rather than just Achilles’ arming scene. As Logue
has it, Thetis arrives to find
Achilles
Gripping the body of Patroclus
Naked and dead against his own,
While Thetis spoke:
‘My son…’
His fighters looking on;
Looking away from it; remembering their own:
‘Grieving will not amend what Heaven has done.
See what I brought…’
And as she laid the moonlit armor on the sand
It chimed…
And the sound that came from it
Followed the light that came from it
Like sighing
Saying:
Made in Heaven.
And those who had the neck to watch Achilles weep
Could not look now.
Nobody looked. They were afraid.
Except Achilles: looked,
Lifted a piece of it between his hands;
Turned it; tested the weight of it; and then
Spun the holy tungsten like a star between his knees,
Slitting his eyes against the flare, some said,
But others thought the hatred shuttered by his lids
Made him protect the metal.
His eyes like furnace doors ajar.
When he had got its weight
And let its industry assuage his grief:
“I’ll fight,’
He said. Simple as that. ‘I’ll fight.’
And so Troy fell.
Logue does not replicate the complicated symbolic references of the Greek. In fact,
nothing about Logue’s translation is similar to the Greek word choice or formulaic
structure or general style. On the other hand, Logue’s passage attempts to replicate
the function of the Shield: it becomes an emblem of Achilles’ godlike nature,
allowing him to achieve undying glory. As I have argued above with regard to
Lattimore’s translation, the original Greek Iliad also uses the Shield as a symbol of
Achilles’ coming death. Logue’s translation has three sections: the presentation of
the armor, Achilles’ unique ability to enjoy the armor, and his decision to fight.
Logue begins with a description of the armor being laid out on the sand by
Thetis, ending with the phrase ‘Made in Heaven,” which is a play on modern
manufactured goods bearing labels like “Made in the USA” or “Made in China.”
Stylistically, the phrase bears no resemblance to the original ekphrasis.
Functionally, however, the phrase “Made in Heaven” does give the reader the idea
of Hephaestus’s divine workmanship. Next, Achilles begins to spin “the holy
tungsten like a star between his knees.” The other soldiers, who are lesser men,
cannot look at the spectacle. Achilles, who has menis like a god, not only looks upon
the armor, but also seems to enjoy being near it. The line “His eyes like furnace
doors ajar” reveals not only that Achilles can endure the sight of the armor, but also
that he seems to be invigorated by it. Moreover, the simile comparing his eyes to
“furnace doors” also recalls the forge of Hephaestus. The brutality of the image, a
fire burning inside Achilles, also foreshadows his upcoming aristeia, as if he is about
to unleash fire and death on those around him. In such a way, the divine armor
transmits its divinity to Achilles. Fully prepared and in his splendor, Achilles says
“I’ll fight,” and, as if in reply, the narrator states “And so Troy fell.”
Logue’s tripartite structure progressively reveals the thematic meaning of Achilles’
armor. First, the armor is divine, seen in the way that Thetis presents it and the
sound that suggests “made in heaven.” Secondly, the way that Achilles is uniquely
able to handle his heavenly armaments confers their supernatural status on him.
Finally, Achilles, now prepared, can set out on his quest to achieve eternal glory,
and thereby meet his death.
The Greek and English differ greatly in style and technique, of course, but
both of them make the armor of Achilles into a symbol of his imminent death; so
even though Logue is writing his translation in a deeply un-Homeric style, he uses
typical modern symbols, foreshadowing, and allusions to achieve the effect that the
Shield has in the original.43
43
There is a very minor difference in focus, which is worth noting, but not much
more than that. The original Greek focuses entirely on the shield; indirectly, the
shield gives some impression of Achilles. In Logue, however, the focus is on how
Achilles relates to his armor. The armor is notable only because of how Achilles
interacts with it. The difference between the two exists, but can be explained as an
Although Logue is successful, his method has some drawbacks. The
technique of a poem is not like a machine, which can be improved or altered to
make an identical product faster; changing how the poem creates its message
changes the poem. Much could be said about Logue’s disregard for the formal
features of the Iliad. After all, many readers, including myself, would say that
understanding and encountering Homeric style is essential to understanding the
Iliad. Logue, however, shows no interest in finding formulas or epithets in his
account of the rage of Achilles.
The more interesting result of Logue’s account is the narrowness of his
translation. Overall, Logue’s Shield is a dark, terrifying one, filled with a fear of the
godlike Achilles and the death that Achilles will soon unleash and suffer. Logue, a
pacifist deserter in real life, has produced an anti-war account of the Iliad. His
Shield scene does not glorify the armor or Achilles, but makes them both seem
powerful and terrifying. Logue’s translation is no “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
(“It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country”). ” For Logue, Horace’s phrase
would be what Wilfred Owen famously called “the old lie.”
The Iliad can certainly be interpreted as an anti-war poem, but pro-war
interpretations are also possible.= Every translation necessarily “loses something,”
as the common saying goes, and in Logue’s translation of the Shield, the loss is in
the varied understandings that the original Greek could sustain. But whereas
attempt at streamlining or modernizing the text by Logue. The difference is, of
course, fairly small.
Lattimore (and Green, to be discussed below) generally attempt to retain the
varied possible meanings of the original, Logue has winnowed his translation down
to only anti-war readings. If the reader of Logue agrees with his heavily anti-war
interpretation of the Shield, then the experience of reading Logue would conform
well to what that reader thinks is the correct response to the Iliad.
Peterson & O’Hare, like Logue, break with the style of the original Greek
in an attempt to express the symbolic greatness of Achilles. Speaking through their
Homer, Peterson & O’Hare describe the Shield as:
A shield—the most magnificent shield I’ve ever seen. Hephaestus begins to
fashion an immense orb—a shield as big as a room—with the river of the
Ocean circling…he puts the earth, the sky, the oceans, the sun, the moon,
all the stars. He hammers out two cities on this shield: in one there is a
wedding taking place, a bride is led down a hillock past trees to her nervous
groom—a city at peace. The other city is a walled city and outside it a siege
is going on—two armies clash by a river. He fashions a field, large with
furrows and he shows the horses tilling back and forth and the farmers
being refreshed with barge cups of wine and honey—a farmer bringing
home his cattle and a lion attacks of the bulls, and back blood pools on the
bottom of the shield—a boy playing a lyre—heartbreaking music—a song
of the dying day—a circle of boys and girls dancing, with a crowd gathered
around, capping, singing, laughing.
This is Achilles’ new shield and it gleamed with a, with a beam that it-it-it
went so far. It was as if you were-you were, you were far out at sea, you
know, a sailor when they have to look out at the shore and try to find their
bearings and they look for a light and you have lighthouses now—but then,
sometimes, we would have, like a—one guy on a mountain, herding his
sheep and he would have a very strong light, you know to try to…keep the
sailors, sailors safe. And…and they’re way out at sea, and this light beam
comes flying out. That’s how Achilles’ shield looked from a distance. It-it-it
just bounced the light back, shot it way out like that.
(a great wind kicks up, and quickly grows.)
The passage can be divided into roughly two sections: first, a summary of the
individual scenes on the Shield, and second, a comparison between the Shield and
ancient lighthouses. The first section is straightforward, describing the world that
the Shield depicts and preserving the metaphorical implications of the Greek
original—the Shield describes the world Achilles does not experience and will not
experience because he is fated to die.
The second part of their description takes a new approach, comparing the
Shield to a light that serves to “keep sailors, sailors safe” and help them “get their
bearings.” Since the purpose of a lighthouse is to warn sailors of impending danger
like cliffs or coral reefs, the Shield of Achilles warns others that its owner poses
terrible danger that must be avoided. The Shield again becomes an emblem of
Achilles’ superhuman nature, a symbol visible to men across the battlefield.
Peterson & O’Hare’s methodology is similar to Logue’s. They change the
style and technique of the original to create a theme similar to that of the original.
However, unlike Logue, Peterson & O’Hare’s new translation introduces an
extended simile, are extremely common in the Iliad. They have merely transposed
that technique to the Shield scene. In effect, they’ve changed the technique of the
Shield scene, but they’ve changed it to something which is very Homeric.
Green’s Ekphrasis
Each translator so far has sought to replicate the structure (Lattimore) or
effect (Logue, Peterson & O’Hare) of the Shield scene. Unlike the other
translators, Peter Green alone attempts to replicate the effect of the original
ekphrasis. As Green writes in his Foreword, his general goal in his translation is to
be “as close as possible, in every respect [to] metre, rhythm, formulaic phrases,
style, and vocabulary…[and] that what I have written should be naturally
declaimable.”44 Green’s attempt to preserve the content of the ekphrasis while also
allowing it to be “naturally declaimable” suggests that he seeks a middle road
between Lattimore and Logue: a translation that stays close to the Greek ekphrasis
was but is easy enough for a modern audience to understand and speak.
First, unlike Lattimore, Green is not concerned with the lack of repeated
formulaic phrases in the passage. Instead, he simply translates the Shield passage
with formulaic phrases from the referent passages. For example, in the city at war,
Green writes that the besieging army asks whether they should “share out between
both sides all the wealth that this lovely city contained?”45 In Book 22, Hector asks
himself if he should suggest to Achilles to “share out with the Achaians all the
wealth that this city contains?”46 Green has, in his translation, written the formulaic
phrases “share out” and “all the wealth that this…city contains” in both lines. The
two lines in Greek , however, are quite different:
Line 18.511-2: ē andixa panta dasasthai / ktēsin osēn ptoliethron epēraton entos eergen.
Line 22.117-8: hama d’amphis Axaiois / all’ apodassesthai, hos ate ptolis hēde kekeuthe.
Formulaic repetition also occurs in the rest of the war section, the sections about
the farming estate, and the dancing scene. Green links the Shield passages which
are thematically similar by using similar formulaic language. He may have done
this because he is attempting to be “naturally declaimable” and has found that using
stock phrases allows him to write certain lines within his pseudo-hexameter verse
44
Green 2015, 18
Green 2015, 352
46
Ibid., 403
45
very easily. Perhaps though, Green, like Logue and Peterson & O’Hare, is simply
uninterested in perfectly replicating the absence of formulaic phrases in the
original.
Instead, Green focuses on paralleling the ekphrasis of the Greek. As
Andrew Becker writes, ekphrasis in the Shield of Achilles is a technique which
enables the poet to develop a “mise en abîme, ‘a miniature replica of a text embedded
within that text; a textual part re-duplicating, reflecting, or mirroring (one or more
than one aspect of) the textual whole’….in ekphrasis not only does the bard
become one of us, an audience, but also the description itself, metonymically,
becomes a model for the poem.”47 What Becker argues is that the technique of
ekphrasis creates a relationship between an (imagined) physical object and a
poetic, artistic description of that object. In such a way, the technique of ekphrasis
makes the physical object into more than just an object: it makes it into a symbol.
Likewise, the poem, instead of just being words or expressions, is given gravitas
and weight by its relationship to something physical. Becker outlines the two core
elements of Greek ekphrasis: first, a description of the object as an object, seen in
details like what it is made out of or how it is made; secondly, a description of
experiencing the object, seen in movement and other impossible expressions, i.e.
describing a frieze of an eagle by the noise it makes while flying.48 Other translators
haphazardly match this description of ekphrasis, but only Peter Green clearly
47
48
Becker 1995, 4-5
Ibid.
attempts to model his translation of ekphrasis on Greek ekphrasis.
Peter Green achieves his effect by joining together description and
movement, principally through imperfect verb forms and highly emotive
descriptive phrases. For example, in the opening description, Hephaestus
“fashioned the earth, the sea, and the heavens, / the unwearying sun, the moon on
its increase to full.” The objects themselves are described, fulfilling the first element
of ekphrasis; but the moon, instead of being stagnant, is “on its increase to full.”
Though there are no verbs in the phrase “on its increase to full,” the motion
described is a continuous imperfect: it is not a completed action, like a perfect (“the
moon has increased”), nor is it being described as an action in full, like a simple
past or aorist (“the moon increased”), nor is it being described as beginning, like an
inchoative imperfect (“the moon began/started to increase”). Rather, it describes a
continuous action (“was increasing”) which has been captured by Hephaestus’
craft. Three other continuous imperfects occur in quick succession in the City at
Peace scene: “in the first, there were marriages and banquets, with brides being led
from their quarters by flaring torchlight through the city…People were backing both
sides, cheering one or the other, while heralds held them back, and the elders were
sitting on polished seats of stone” [emphasis added].49 All these verb forms are
imperfects which show an action in motion. Therefore, Green’s translation fulfills
the second requirement of ekphrasis in the early scenes of the Shield of Achilles:
though static objects are described, Green gives the impression of movement.
49
Green 2015, 352
Green’s translation makes his reader imagine not only a Shield, impossibly ornate,
but a Shield in motion: because of the continuous repetition of the imperfect verb
forms, Green’s reader can see brides moving across the Shield, or people loudly
cheering, or elders sitting down on stone. Green has made a Shield of many moving
parts. It is ancient ekphrasis in modern English.50
Conclusions
I have covered four radically different approaches to the Shield of Achilles.
Lattimore gives the most straightforward translation, attempting to show the
structure of the Shield scene. Specifically, he shows each of the symbolic
connections the Shield makes with other passages throughout the Iliad, without
fashioning any new formulaic connections which are not in the original. By
contrast, Logue and Peterson & O’Hare translate their Shield scene with an eye
towards how their audience will accept it. Their translations are pointed
interpretations of the original Shield scene, and, as a consequence, they share
nearly none of the stylistic features of the original. Green alone goes a different
50
For comparison, the following are the same lines as quoted above in Lattimore’s
translation:
18.483: “He made the earth upon it, and the sky, and the sea’s water, / and the
tireless sun, and the moon beginning to wax into her fullness.”
18.491ff: “There were marriages in one, and festivals. / They led the brides
along the city from their maiden chambers / under the flaring of torches….
People were speaking up on either side, to help both men. But the heralds kept
the people in hand, as meanwhile the elders / began to sit in session on benches
of polished stone.”
Lattimore prefers to use simple past tenses (‘led’) and inchoative imperfects
(“kept the people in hand” “began to sit”), rather than the continuous
imperfects of Green.
route and remakes the technique of the Shield scene, ekphrasis, uniting
descriptions of static objects with movement.
So far, I believe I have shown that the techniques the translators use all
“bring out” some aspect of the original text. None of the four translations shown
are incorrect in their translations. Lattimore’s text is an exact diagram, Logue’s is
filled with drama and tension, Peterson & O’Hare’s makes Achilles fearful, and
Green’s is practical musical in his ekphrasis. All of those feelings can be
convincingly shown to be in the original Iliad. I hope to have shown here, leading
towards a larger point in my next chapter, the notion that these translations all
analyze the text in a certain way, and therefore replicate certain aspects of it.
41
Death and Prophecy; Translation as Analysis
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can
never know that he is dead.
––Samuel Butler
I tell you in truth: All men are prophets or else God does not exist.
––Jean-Paul Sartre
In Book 16, Patroclus, after killing Sarpedon, is slain by Hector. Hector
kills Patroclus. Achilles, enraged at the death of his beloved comrade (see the next
chapter for their relationship), promises in Book 19 to avenge Patroclus and to kill
Hector. In Book 22, Achilles succeeds in his goal, killing Hector outside the Trojan
walls. Finally, though the Iliad does not directly depict it, Achilles is killed with a
poisoned arrow by Paris in revenge for Hector’s death and the attempted
desecration of Hector’s body. Therefore, the death of Patroclus at the hands of
Hector creates a narrative arc which ends with Paris killing Achilles. When Hector
kills Patroclus, he effectively guarantees his own death at Achilles’ hands; equally,
when Achilles kills Hector, he ensures his death because of Paris. The imagery of
the poem confirms that the heroes are, in a sense, killing themselves as they kill
their opponents. When Achilles fights Hector in Book 22, Hector is wearing
Achilles’ old set of armor, “the bronze armor, the fair armor which he had stripped
form mighty Patroclus when he slew him (22.322ff).” The imagery, then, is of
Achilles fighting a pseudo-Achilles. The doubling of Achilles encourages the
listener of the poem to see that when slaying Hector, Achilles is killing himself.
Although the battle between Achilles and Hector is the only scene in the Iliad to
feature doubling imagery in armor, the same can be said of each hero from
42
Patroclus on. In Weil’s terminology, the application of force leads towards the
equal application of force.51
To reduce the last six books of the Iliad to some sort of narrative of the
adage “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” would be incorrect. The
interest of the last six books is not just that the heroes confront their own mortality
(although they all inevitably do), but how they confront mortality. There are two
specific scenes that illustrate Hector’s and Achilles’ outlook on death: Book 16.
843-861, the death of Patroclus, and Book 22. 356-366, the death of Hector.
Book 16, 843-861:
τὸν δ' ὀλιγοδρανέων προσέφης Πατρόκλεες ἱππεῦ:
ἤδη νῦν Ἕκτορ μεγάλ' εὔχεο: σοὶ γὰρ ἔδωκε
νίκην Ζεὺς Κρονίδης καὶ Ἀπόλλων, οἵ με δάμασσαν
ῥηιδίως: αὐτοὶ γὰρ ἀπ' ὤμων τεύχε' ἕλοντο.
τοιοῦτοι δ' εἴ πέρ μοι ἐείκοσιν ἀντεβόλησαν,
πάντές κ' αὐτόθ' ὄλοντο ἐμῷ ὑπὸ δουρὶ δαμέντες.
ἀλλά με μοῖρ' ὀλοὴ καὶ Λητοῦς ἔκτανεν υἱός,
ἀνδρῶν δ' Εὔφορβος: σὺ δέ με τρίτος ἐξεναρίζεις.
ἄλλο δέ τοι ἐρέω, σὺ δ' ἐνὶ φρεσὶ βάλλεο σῇσιν:
οὔ θην οὐδ' αὐτὸς δηρὸν βέῃ, ἀλλά τοι ἤδη
ἄγχι παρέστηκεν θάνατος καὶ μοῖρα κραταιὴ
χερσὶ δαμέντ' Ἀχιλῆος ἀμύμονος Αἰακίδαο.
ὣς ἄρα μιν εἰπόντα τέλος θανάτοιο κάλυψε:
ψυχὴ δ' ἐκ ῥεθέων πταμένη Ἄϊδος δὲ βεβήκει
ὃν πότμον γοόωσα λιποῦσ' ἀνδροτῆτα καὶ ἥβην.
τὸν καὶ τεθνηῶτα προσηύδα φαίδιμος Ἕκτωρ:
Πατρόκλεις τί νύ μοι μαντεύεαι αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον;
τίς δ' οἶδ' εἴ κ' Ἀχιλεὺς Θέτιδος πάϊς ἠϋκόμοιο
φθήῃ ἐμῷ ὑπὸ δουρὶ τυπεὶς ἀπὸ θυμὸν ὀλέσσαι;
845
850
855
860
Then you answered him, Patroclus, horseman, your strength spent,
‘For now, Hector, boast mightily; for Zeus, the son of Cronos,
51
Weil 2005, 3
43
And Apollo, have granted victory to you, they who defeated me
Easily; for they took the armor off my shoulders.
But if twenty men like you had faced me,
All would have died, defeated by my spear.
But destructive fate and the son of Leto slew me,
And of men, Euphorbus, but you slay me as the third.
And another thing I will tell you,
And do you lay it to heart: surely you
Shall not yourself be long in life,
But even now does death stand hard by you and irresistible fate,
Slain by the hand of Achilles, the incomparable grandson of Aeacus.’
845
Thus now having spoken, the end of death seized him:
But his soul fled from his limbs, flying to Hades,
His soul which bewailed its fate, leaving manliness and youth.
And Hector, glorious, spoke to him, even in death:
Patroclus, why do you now prophesy harsh destruction to me?
Who knows but that even Achilles, son of fair-haired Thetis,
May first be struck by my spear and lose his life?”
855
Book 22, 356-367:
τὸν δὲ καταθνῄσκων προσέφη κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ:
ἦ σ' εὖ γιγνώσκων προτιόσσομαι, οὐδ' ἄρ' ἔμελλον
πείσειν: ἦ γὰρ σοί γε σιδήρεος ἐν φρεσὶ θυμός.
φράζεο νῦν, μή τοί τι θεῶν μήνιμα γένωμαι
ἤματι τῷ ὅτε κέν σε Πάρις καὶ Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων
ἐσθλὸν ἐόντ' ὀλέσωσιν ἐνὶ Σκαιῇσι πύλῃσιν.
ὣς ἄρα μιν εἰπόντα τέλος θανάτοιο κάλυψε,
ψυχὴ δ' ἐκ ῥεθέων πταμένη Ἄϊδος δὲ βεβήκει
ὃν πότμον γοόωσα λιποῦσ' ἀνδροτῆτα καὶ ἥβην.
τὸν καὶ τεθνηῶτα προσηύδα δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς:
τέθναθι: κῆρα δ' ἐγὼ τότε δέξομαι ὁππότε κεν δὴ
Ζεὺς ἐθέλῃ τελέσαι ἠδ' ἀθάνατοι θεοὶ ἄλλοι.
But, dying, Hector of the flashing helmet said to him:
‘You, I know well and I see what will be, nor was I destined
To persuade you; for the heart in your breast is iron.
But think now, lest I become a cause of the gods’ wrath against you
On the day when Paris and Phoebus Apollo
Slay you, though you are valiant, before the Scaean gates.’
Thus now having spoken, the end of death seized him;
But his soul fled from his limbs, flying to Hades,
His soul which bewailed its fate, leaving manliness and youth.
And noble Achilles, spoke to him, even in death:
‘Die now; I will accept my fate, when Zeus or the other
850
860
356
360
365
356
360
365
44
Immortal gods wish to bring it to pass.’52
In both passages, Patroclus and Hector, dying, prophesy the deaths of their
killers, and then their killers reply to their corpses. The prophecies that Patroclus
and Hector deliver share only one formulaic phrase.53 However, both passages do
refer to fate. Patroclus says that death and “moira kratairē (irresistible fate)” press on
Hector, while Hector says that he was not “emellon (destined)” to persuade
Achilles.54 Here, emellon means “destined” rather than “intended” since Hector
obviously did “intend” to persuade Achilles but was unable to do so. Discussion of
fate is hardly unique to these two passages in the Iliad, however, so the similarities
between the two passages are primarily in their subject matter: prophecies given
immediately before death.
The second stanzas, by contrast, are deeply formulaic in both passages. In
fact lines 16.855-858 and 22.362-365 are essentially identical. The two passages can
52
Both translations by me. As before, I provide these sample translations only for
ease of reading for any readers who do not speak Greek.
53
They do share introductory formulaic phrases:
Line 16.843: τὸν δ' ὀλιγοδρανέων προσέφης Πατρόκλεες ἱππεῦ
Line 22.356: τὸν δὲ καταθνῄσκων προσέφη κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ
However, the line-type: ton [nominative or accusative phrase, ~2 feet in length]
prosephē(s) [nominative phrase, ~2.5 feet in length], appears some 100 times in the
Iliad.
54
“To persuade Achilles” is a reference either to the fact that Hector could not
persuade Achilles to accept a truce between Troy and the Achaean forces (22.90130) or to agree not to desecrate each other’s corpses (22.250-272). Alternatively,
peisein could be translated as “to prevail,” so that Hector actually means that he was
not destined to defeat Achilles in battle. Since Hector has just asked that Achilles
give back his body to the Trojans, peisein as “to persuade to respect each other’s
bodies” seems the most defensible interpretation.
45
be thought of as referential to each other or referential to a shared, separate
standard line formula. The first possibility, that the two passages refer to each
other, works in the following way: hearing these first four lines from Book 16 (or
Book 22), the audience may remember some past performance of Book 22 (or
Book 16), and realizes that the killer is about to respond in a way that is
formulaically similar to the other passage to which it refers. In effect, the repetition
of the formulaic phrase puts these two passages in apposition to each other. The
second possibility, which I consider more likely, is that these three lines would
have already primed the audience to expect a killer’s response which reveals
something about the killer himself. In such a way, lines 16.855-857 and 22.362-364
work as a sort of signal phrase to the audience, preparing them to consider the
following speech in a specific way. Since Hector’s and Achilles’ speeches are both
introduced in such a way, they are innately comparable since they are similar
“types” of speeches, but in this interpretation the formulaic phrases are not
allusions to each other.55
Of course, under either model, the passages form an implicit comparison
between the two men who make the speeches. Hector, having killed Patroclus, is
told that he will be slain by Achilles, “the incomparable grandson of Aeacus”
55
An example in English of these two kinds of models working can be
useful. Were I beginning a novel with the sentence “Call me Jonathan,” I would
certainly be alluding to Moby Dick. On the other hand, were I to begin my novel
with the phrase “once upon a time,” I would not be making a specific reference
(even though “once upon a time” is frequently used by Hans Christian Anderson),
but instead I would be using practiced, coded language to signify the beginning of
a fairy tale. The former is my first model; the latter is my second.
46
(16.856). The speech of Patroclus was understood, like most prophecy in the Iliad,
such as the prophecies of Calchas, to be an accurate prediction, rather than
subjective hope on the part of Patroclus. Hector’s response, however, reveals that
Hector does not agree with Patroclus’ vision of the future: “Who knows but that
even Achilles, son of fair-haired Thetis, / May first be struck by my spear and lose
his life? (16.862-3)” Hector thinks, mistakenly, that he might be able to kill
Achilles. Given how Achilles has been described in the previous 16 books, the
audience likely finds Hector’s confidence in himself to be misplaced. But Hector
goes further than just doubting Achilles’ fighting ability: he replaces Achilles’
epithet of amumonos Aiakidao (“incomparable grandson of Aeacus”) with Thetidos
pais ēukomoio (“child of fair-haired Thetis”); by changing Achilles’ lineage from the
patrilineal to the matrilineal, Hector subtly belittles Achilles. Instead of being the
grandson of the powerful king Aeacus, Achilles is named as the son of a mother
with very nice hair. In effect, then, Hector not only denies what is fated to happen,
but he also seems to disparage Achilles.
On the other hand, Achilles accepts his fate with all the grace that twentytwo books of character development can give him. After mortally wounding Hector
and being told that he will be killed by Paris and Apollo, Achilles simply says “Die
now; I will accept my fate, when Zeus or the other / Immortal gods wish to bring it
to pass.” (22.366) His single word imperative “tethnathi” (“Die now”) is abrupt and
dismissive and typical. Part of Achilles’ curtness stems from his rage over Hector’s
role in the death of Patroclus, but Achilles, who has bested Hector, also treats him
as a lesser hero than himself. So with a simple command, Achilles orders Hector to
die, and Hector does die. It is significant, however, that Achilles immediately goes
47
on to say that he himself will be fully wiling to die whenever “Zeus or the other /
Immortal gods wish to bring it to pass.” So although Achilles can kill Hector,
Achilles does not have the pride to think that he is above the will of the gods.
Achilles, then, is revealing himself to be the perfect Homeric Hero. He is a killer of
men, efficient and better than anyone else, which confirms his status as “Best of the
Achaeans.” That power to kill easily puts Achilles on a semi-divine level (much like
the Shield in Chapter 3) but, crucially, Achilles never presumes himself to be equal
to or better than the gods. He is, in his grandiosity, still humble before them.
The translations of these passages all must interact with these concerns:
48
Lattimore
Book 16 And now, dying,
you answered him,
O rider Patroklos:
“Now is your time
for big words,
Hektor. Yours is the
victory
giving by Kronos’
son, Zeus, and
Apollo, who have
subdued me
easily, since they
themselves stripped
the arms from my
shoulders.
Even though twenty
such as you had
come in against me,
They would all have
been broken
beneath my spear,
and have perished.
No, deadly destiny,
with the son of Leto,
has killed me,
And of men, it was
Euphorbos; you are
only my third slayer.
And put away in
your heart this other
thing that I tell you.
Green
Peterson & O’Hare
Then, strength ebbing,
you answered him,
horseman Patroklos:
“Go on, boast big
while you can! You
were handed this
triumph
by Apollo and Zeus,
son of Kronos, who
overwhelmed me
easily: they themselves
removed the gear from
my shoulders.
Poet: And then Patroclus—
holding his body together
with his hands—Patroclus
curses Hector.
If twenty men such as
you had confronted
me, all
Would have perished
here, quelled by my
spear! Oh no, it was
Deadly fate and the
son of Leto that slew
me, and of mortals
Euphorbos: you’re
only the third hand in
my killing.
And another thing I’ll
tell you, and you lay it
to heart:
You yourself are not
one who shall live
long, but now
already
Death and powerful
destiny are standing
beside you,
To go down under
the hands of Aiakos’
great son,
Achilleus.”
You yourself are not
for a long life: now
already
Death’s moved in
close beside you, your
all-mastering fate
To be slain at the
hands of Achilles,
Aiakos’s peerless
grandson.”
He spoke and as he
spoke the end of
death closed in upon
him,
When he’d spoken
thus, death’s end
enshrouded him,
Patroclus:
…you won’t live long
yourself, I swear.
Already I see them looking
up beside you—death
And the strong force of fate,
to bring you down—
Poet (a simple funeral ritual).
Death cut him short. The
end closed in around him.
49
And the soul
fluttering free of his
limbs went down
into death’s house
mourning her
destiny leaving
youth and manhood
behind her.
Now though he was
a dead man glorious
Hektor spoke to
him:
Patroklos, what is
this prophecy of my
headlong
destruction?
Who knows if even
Achilleus, son of
lovely-haired Thetis,
Might before this be
struck by my spear,
and his own life
perish?”
And the soul fled from
his limbs, fluttered
down to Hades
Bewailing its fate,
youth and manhood all
abandoned.
Yet still Hektor
harangued him, dead
though he was:
Patroklos, why do you
prophesy sheer
destruction for me?
Who knows if perhaps
Achilles, fair haired
Thetis’ son,
May, struck by my
spear, lose his life
before that happens?
Flying free of his limbs
His soul went winging
down to the House of
Death.
But Hector can’t stop
yelling at Patroclus, even
though he’s dead:
Hector You think you
know my fate?? Why should
I fear Death? No. Death is
on my side. He is my brother.
And together we were
devastate you, we will
murder all Greeks!
50
Book 22 Then, dying, Hektor Then, dying, brightof the shining
helmet spoke to
him:
“I know you well as
I look upon you; I
know that I could
not persuade you,
since indeed in your
breast is a heart of
iron.
Be careful now; for
I might be made
into the gods’ curse
upon you, on that
day when Paris and
Phoibos Apollo
destroy you in the
Skaian gates, for all
your valor.”
He spoke and as he
spoke the end of
death closed in upon
him, and the soul
fluttering free of the
limbs went down
into Death’s house
Mourning her
destiny, leaving
youth and manhood
behind her.
Now though he was
a dead man brilliant
Achilleus spoke to
him:
“Die: and I will take
my own death hat
whatever time
Zeus and the rest of
the immortals
choose to
accomplish it.”
helmeted Hektor said
to him:
“I know you too well,
I foresee my fate: I
could never
Persuade you.
Truly the heart in your
breast is of iron. Think
on this, then: it may be
I who provoke the
gods’ wrath
Against you, that day
when Paris and
Phoibos Apollo
Kill you, for all your
valor, before the
Skaian Gates.”
When he’d spoken
thus, death’s end
enshrouded him,
And the soul fled from
his limbs fluttered
down to Hades,
Bewailing its fate,
youth and manhood all
abandoned.
Yet noble Achilles still
harangued him, even
when dead:
“Lie there, corpse! My
own fate I’ll accept
whenever Zeus may
determine it—he, and
the other immortal
gods.”
Hector:
I know you well—I see my
fate before me.
Iron inside your chest, that
heart of yours.
But now beware, or my
curse will draw god’s wrath
Upon your head, that day
when Paris and Lord
Apollo—
For all your fighting
heart—destroy you at the
Scaean Gates!
Poet (Performing a brief
ritual.)
Death cut him short. The
end closed in around him.
Flying free of his limbs
His soul went winging
down to the House of
Death.
Achilles (Doing a kind of
victory dance.)
Now,
Come, you sons of Achaea,
raise a song of triumph!
Down to the ships we
march and bear this corpse
on high—
We have won ourselves
great glory. We have
brought
Magnificent Hector down,
that man the Trojans
Glorified in their city like a
god!
51
Words Do Things
Although the translations have numerous differences in detail, they are
remarkably similar over all. Many phrases come out nearly the same in all three:
for example, Lattimore translates “indeed in your breast is a heart of iron,” Green
writes “Truly the heart in your breast is of iron,” and Peterson & O’Hare put “Iron
inside your chest, that heart of yours.” In fact, the lines that do appear substantially
different have very similar functions: Green and Lattimore say Patroclus
“answered” Hector, while Peterson & O’Hare’s Patroclus alone “curses” Hector.
Even here, the difference seems, at best, minor. Since Patroclus predicts Hector’s
doom, “curse” hardly seems to be out of place as an introductory verb. In that same
line, Lattimore’s Patroclus is “dying,” Green’s has his “strength ebbing,” and
Peterson & O’Hare’s is “holding his body together with his hands.” All of those are
certainly different, especially how much more vivid “holding his body together with
his hands” is than the other two translations, but all three translations do the same
thing: they make it clear that Patroclus is dying and that these will be his last
words.
Within Patroclus’ speech, Green and Lattimore differ on the modality of his
conditional sentence in 16.847:5657
56
Peterson & O’Hare do not translate that part of the speech; generally, since they
are writing a play, the difference is less for literary merit than for time purposes.
57
The sentence can be pared down to the conditional “if antebolēsan, then olonto.”
The verb in the protasis antebolēsan is an active aorist subjunctive third-person
plural of antiboleō, while that in the apodosis olonto is a middle aorist indicative
third-person plural of ollumi: the sentence pattern appears to be a mix of a past
general in the protasis and a past contra-factual in the apodosis
52
toioutoi d’ei per moi eeikosin anteboēsan, / pantes k’autoth’ olunto emō hupo douri damentes.
But if twenty men like you had faced me / All would have died, defeated by my
spear.
In his typical fashion, Lattimore translates the text exactly as it appears
“Even though twenty such as you had come in against me, / They would all have
been broken beneath my spear, and have perished,” where the first line is an aorist
past general, while the second line is a past contra-factual. Though Lattimore’s
English features an unusual pairing of past general and past contra-factual clauses,
it is certainly properly reflective of the Greek.58 Green, meanwhile, turns the entire
line into a past contra-factual (“If twenty men such as you had confronted me, all
would have perished here, quelled by my spear!”). The difference between the two
is in the modality of the protasis (“even though…had come” vs. “if…had
confronted”), but whether that difference actually affects the reading of the passage
seems unlikely for any reader who is not a grammarian. Both translations present
to the reader the idea that if Patroclus had been confronted with twenty men as
good as Hector, he would have killed them all with his spear.
There are other slight differences between the translations. For example,
Achilles’ single word command to Hector “tethnathi” has been rendered by
Lattimore as “Die,” by Green as “Lie there, corpse!” and by Peterson & O’Hare
only as a stage direction, “Doing a kind of victory dance.” All three are different, of
course, but express the same idea: Achilles is greater than Hector, Achilles is glad
58
A more typical English example of this mixed clause structure is the following:
“Even though it was raining, I would have visited the store,” as opposed to a purely
past contra-factual “If it had been raining, the store would have been visited.”
53
that Hector is dead, Achilles wants Hector to stop talking and simply be dead, and
by making such a command, Achilles makes himself nearly a god, commanding
death to another. Functionally, all these translations accomplish their goal, but in
slightly different ways. “Lie there, corpse!” and “Die,” are practically intralingual59
translations of each other. Peterson & O’Hare’s stage direction, taken in the
context of a performance, presents an effect equivalent to Lattimore and Green’s
translations: by dancing Achilles seems happy that Hector has died, pleased that he
has defeated Hector, whose corpse he insultingly dances on.
For the four formulaic repeated lines (16.855-858 and 22.362-365) there is
very little difference in the translations. They use almost the same syntax but with
slightly different word choice. The first line is rendered by Lattimore as “He spoke
and as he spoke, the end of death closed in on him,” by Green as “When he spoke
thus, death’s end enshrouded him,” and by Peterson & O’Hare as “Death cut him
short. The end closed in around him.” The three translations are very similar in
English, and the differences, such as Peterson & O’Hare’s conversion of the line
into two sentences or Green’s use of “enshrouded,” a more poetic term, seem
unlikely to produce a difference in the reader’s reception of the work. All three
translators use the formulaic lines the same way: they repeat the same words nearly
verbatim for Patroclus’ death and Hector’s death. In terms of the two types of
models translators could use to understand the repeated formulaic phrasing, all
59
Intralingual translation: a translation in the same language. Paraphrasing or
summarizing are two example of intralingual translation. See Jacobson 2000.
54
three decisively utilize the first, comparative model. There is no way for the
audience of Lattimore’s, Green’s, or Peterson & O’Hare’s translations to realize on
sight (which is what the second model demands) that a great hero has died and that
his killer is about to speak. The formulaic phrases in all three translations work
only in reference to each other, and, therefore, are allusions to each other.
Why are the translators varying in individual words but not in the way they
use those words? To rephrase so that I do not spend the next few pages guessing at
Richmond Lattimore’s thoughts, are there any features of the Greek text itself
which encourage certain words or phrases to be used the same way by the
translators but allow for different translations of the actual words?
If the answer to why the translations are so similar is not in the English
language, it must be in the Greek text. I will begin with a very basic notion. Words
do things in sentences and in literature, and they frequently do multiple things.
What they do, I will refer to as their “function.” Words always have grammatical
function; for example, in the previous sentence, “have” is a verb which functions to
define what things “words” possess. Words also have literary function, however.
For example, in the first line of the Iliad, mēnis functions as a marker to the
audience of what the theme of the poem is. If a definition is the answer to the
question “what does a word mean?” then a function is the answer to the question
“what does a word do?” In these passages, I propose that the Greek formulaic
phrases are providing a “backbone” of sorts that the translators are working off.
Specifically, translators are replicating most of the functions of the Greek formulaic
phrases. The functions which translators are all replicating, and this is why their
translations all sound so similar, are those words which have grammatical or
55
narratological functions. To speak more clearly, words which govern the grammar
or the narrative of the passage have that function translated. However, translators
do not always agree on the literal (“what does a word mean?”) translation of the
formulaic phrases, so we see minor differences in the literal words used in their
texts, even if those words all do the same thing in all three translations.
Translators, in seeking to make an equivalent of the Iliad, more easily
replicate the function of words than their literal meanings. For example, ekho means
“to have,” and in a simple Greek sentence, like Omeros ekhei ton bibion,(“Homer has
the book”) every translator will use a word in place of ekhei to show what Omeros
owns. However, they could use “possess,” “has,” “controls,” “governs,” “grips,” etc.
The literal meanings of words are, in translation, separated from the function they
possess; a translator seeks to replicate the function and and the meaning of a word,
but, since Greek and English do not have easily interchangeable lexicons (the two
languages divide the world differently), translators are frequently confronted with
Greek words for which there are English words with equivalent function (English
words which do the same thing) but no English words with exact equivalent
meanings (English words which mean the same thing). The original writer,
however, cannot see function and meaning as separate entities. When I write
Omeros ekhei ton biblion, I choose to use the word ekhei because of its literal meaning
and function, but, in composing, the meaning and the function of the word ekhei
come together in the one word, ekhei. I cannot choose a word which means “to
have,” or some variation thereof, which does not also have the function of a word
which means “to have.”
56
In such a way, translation can be compared to rebuilding a house. Certain
structures in the house, like electrical wiring, plumbing, or load-bearing walls
would all need to go in the same location as in the original house, not just because
one is attempting to rebuild a house, but because those objects do something in the
house. A load-bearing wall, for example, must be in the right place, otherwise the
house could collapse. That wall could be pink, blue, or decked in paintings, but its
function, bearing the weight of the house, must be replicated. The same process, I
argue, is happening here in translations of the Iliad.
Words Functioning in the Iliad
Examples are sorely needed to show how translations analyze the function
of their originals. Line 16.843 suffices for an example:
ton d’oligodraneōn prosephēs Patroklees hippeu.
Then you answered him, Patroclus, horseman, your strength spent
The first formula is oligodraneōn, meaning “lacking in strength” or
“weakened,” but connoting “dying.” It appears three times in the Iliad, each time
reflecting the final speech of a dying character.60 Translators attempt to replicate it
as a marker of death, so Lattimore translates “dying”; Green, “strength ebbing”;
and Peterson & O’Hare, “holding his body together with his hands.” The
translations differ in the exact words they use, and in fact, those different words
carry different denotations, but each one functions as a marker for Patroclus’
impending death. Oligodraneōn covers all three of the translations relatively well, but
60
15.246; 16.843; 22.337
57
serves only the one function which all three translations replicate. Equally, prosephēs
functions grammatically to introduce the upcoming speech, so when Lattimore and
Green write “answer” and Peterson & O’Hare write “curse,” they are both
replicating the same grammatical function of a word which introduces a speech,
but they differ on the literal level. They are all replicating the “load-bearing” of the
load-bearing wall, but their walls are all different colors.
Hippeu,(“horseman”) however, shows what happens when narrative or
grammatical functions are not present: Lattimore and Green, as the most word-forword and line-for-line translators, give their own interpretation of the epithet
(“rider,” Lattimore; “horseman,” Green), but Peterson & O’Hare do not translate it
at all. Since hippeu functions only as a decorative and metrical marker, Peterson &
O’Hare can choose to not translate it without affecting the narrative of their
passage (unlike oligodraneōn) or the grammar of their passage (unlike prosephēs).61
Since it is no longer as essential to translate for its function, the translations begin
to differ. The same pattern plays out in the longest formula in the passages: 16.855857 and 22.362-364. The function of the lines works the same for each translator,
as a marker that the speaker is dying and that the killer is about to speak. In doing
so, it links the deaths of Patroclus and Hector to each other, even six books apart.
All three translators replicate that function by repeating 16.855-7 in 22.362-364
61
Hippeu’s thematic function is that it establishes Patroclus as a rider of horses, and
specifically links him to the horse-races which are so central to his funeral games.
In such a way, calling him hippeu at this point may be foreshadowing of his
upcoming funeral. But the primary function of hippeu appears metrical: the Poet
needed a final spondee and hippeu both made sense and was easy to use.
58
identically. This formula especially shows the discontinuity between literal meaning
and function: the formulaic phrases in lines 16.855-857 and 22.362-364 achieve
their function by repetition in the translated texts.62
In such a way, translation tells the reader a great deal about the original by
separating how what words do from what words mean. The only other way to
understand how the Greek passages work is by analyzing them in scholarly
fashion. Yet, that is exactly what translation is doing. In fact, translation, at this
abstract level, essentially is analysis. Discovering what words do (and going
beyond words: what lines, stanzas, books, etc., do) is the exact thing which
analysis, and translation, reveal. Taken a step further, and this is a step beyond the
bounds of my thesis, I would be willing to say the opposite as well: analysis is
translation. The two cognitive processes are deeply interwoven—the only
difference is that if one does it across languages, it is called translation. I see no
reason to not think of Milman Parry as a wonderful translator of Homeric verse,
since he brought its meaning and art across the ages, though he never wrote a
single line.
62
The decision by the translators to use repetition to achieve the function of the
formulaic phrases corresponds to the first model, which I introduced earlier in this
chapter, of how the formulaic phrase functions.
59
Achilles and Patroclus: Creating Sexuality
I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and
England’s.
––E.M. Forster
Vienna was a city with no exit, a city that banished you and then didn’t allow you
to leave.
––Ruth Kluger
There is likely no part of the Iliad so vastly reinterpreted and revisited
throughout the ages as the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. Their
relationship has been variously interpreted as romantic, pederastic, militaristic,
feudal, or platonic. In general, the various interpretations of their relationship can
be correlated to the type of male-male relationships which have been most prized
or rewarded at the time of the interpretation. The translations which I have been
looking at reflect many possible interpretations of the relationship of Achilles and
Patroclus, but since they are only from the last half-century, the five translations
only reflect a small part of the long continuum of understandings of Achilles and
Patroclus. First, I will review the various interpretations of their relationship from
Classical Athens, early modern Europe, and contemporary culture. Stanley Fish’s
model of the interpretative community provides the best guide to explaining the
existence of so many interpretations. After re-applying that model back onto the
various cultural explored, I will discuss how translators approach Achilles and
Patroclus.
Ancient Greek Pederasty, and Achilles and Patroclus
Classical Athens viewed the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus as
primarily pederastic. Pederastic relationships in Athens were, in general terms,
relationships between older men, called erastes, and younger men, eromenos, in
60
which the erastes gave the eromenos status, honor, knowledge, or tutelage, while the
eromenos gave the erastes some form of sexual pleasure. The relationship, in a sense,
became a highly refined gift-exchange system.63 The erastes pursued the eromenos,
while the eromenos fled or pretended to flee. For example, Theognis 1311-1316:
You haven’t fooled me, boy—I’m on your trail—
You’ve stolen off to your new fast friend,
And thrown my love away in scorn.
But you were no friend of theirs before.
No, out of them all, I thought it was you I’d made a trusted
Mate. And now you hold another lover.64
Jealousy on the part of the erastes is common in the poetry of Theognis. Theognis,
addressing his eromenos (“boy”), says “I’m on your trail” and “You’ve stolen off to
your new fast friend,” indicating that the eromenos ran from a pursuing erastes.
How the erastes psychically interacted with eromenos is not clear in archaic
poetry like Theognis: vase paintings are the best indicators of the physical
processes which could occur in a pederastic relationship. In Figure 1, below, the
figure on the left has a beard and leans on a cane. Lear writes that the
“posture/prop set for an erastes in red-figure vase-painting…is…arch-typical;
perhaps one could say that it symbolizes the erastes’ leisured status and/or the
leisureliness of courtship.”65 The bearded man holds his hand to his heart in a
gesture whose meaning is not certain. He holds his courtship gift behind him,
hiding what appears to be a hare from the figure on the right. The right figure,
63
See Mauss 2001
Trans. by Bing and Cohen 1991, 101.
65
Andrew Lear 2010, 39
64
61
meanwhile, is shorter than the figure on the left, indicating his youth, and he wears
his cloak in a manner which covers his entire body. That clothing can be
interpreted as a sign of modesty, but since it also covers his hands, the heavy
clothing also prohibits the viewer from seeing if the young man is ready to accept
or reject the gift.66 The older man appears to be actively attempting to court the
seemingly passive youth on the right. Their relationship appears to be in its earliest
stage: the erastes has not yet presented a gift, but is preparing to do so. Taken
literally, Fig. 1 implies erastai gave gifts like hares to their eromenoi. There are many
other vases which depict a similar scene.67 Fig. 1 indicates that the pursuit by the
66
67
As a sign of modesty, see Ferrari 1990
Würzburg etc.
62
erastes of the eromenos very frequently took the form of a gift-courtship whose
success was not a guarantee.
Fig. 2 (Würzburg 480) depicts a similar courtship scene, but a few moments
later. The figure on the right, standing, with a cane, is clearly the erastes, while the
seated figure, wearing a cloak similar to the cloaked figure in Fig. 1, is the eromenos.
The erastes holds a hare out forcefully in the face of the eromenos. The forcefulness
of the gesture can be interpreted as erotic. The eromenos, however, modestly stays
seated. He makes no indication of acceptance or rejection of the gift. His cloak and
pose betray no hint of his thoughts. If the scene is taken metaphorically, the erastes
Figure 1: Figure 2: Würzburg 482
is forward, demanding, and aggressive, while the eromenos is being coy, distant, and
63
modest. The primary qualities of the erastes and the eromenos, chasing and fleeing,
respectively, which Theognis describes, are displayed in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2.
But what happens if that courting goes well? What is the purpose of a
pederastic relationship? What exactly happened during the consummation of a
pederastic relationship is unclear. If it did happen, like the relationship which
existed before it, pederastic consummation appears to have favored the erastes at
the expense of the eromenos. Cohen argues that courtship in the pederastic
relationship was essentially a zero sum game, where if the erastes won, the eromenos
lost.68 Since submission by the eromenos meant passivity to the male erastes, and
passivity was dishonorable, the relationship between the erastes and the eromenos
was a competition imbued with the “politics of reputation, whose normative poles
are honor and shame.”69 The most dangerous pitfall for the eromenos was to become
an example of Jack Winkler’s kinaidos:
Since sexual activity is symbolic of (or constructed as) zero-sum
competition and the relentless conjunction of winners with losers, the
kinaidos is a man who desires to lose…the kinaidos simply and directly
desires to be mastered. Women too, in this ideology, are turn on by losing, a
perception which is at the core of Greek misogyny.70
To avoid the danger of wanting to be passive, the eromenos, if he did yield to
the erastes, was not expected to find pleasure in the sex act. Socrates in Xenephon’s
Symposium, for example, says that a “youth does not share in the pleasure of the
68Figure 3:
480
CohenWürzburg
1991, 171ff
69
Cohen 1991, 183
70
Winkler 54
64
intercourse as a woman does, but looks on, sober, at another in love's intoxication.
Consequently, it need not excite any surprise if contempt for the lover is
engendered in [the eromenos].”71 Plato also writes in Phaedrus that the eromenos must
not experience any pleasure in the pederastic relationship: “But what consolation
or what pleasure can he give the beloved? Must not this protracted intercourse
bring him to the uttermost disgust?”72 These two descriptions of pederastic
consummation are, at best, disturbing to modern sensibilities.
There is a clear picture of the overall look of Greek pederasty: a relationship
between an older man and a younger man in which the older man chases and the
young man flees. Emotions were involved, at the very least on the part of the
erastes. The younger eromenos, for all the toil and torment which he undergoes,
receives the tutelage of his erastes. Sexual consummation is presented as joyful only
for the erastes and not for the eromenos.
The Greeks saw this pederastic relationship between Achilles and
Patroclus. Though many writers vaguely refer to Achilles and Patroclus as
pederastic, Aeschines, Aeschylus, Plato, and Xenophon are the only authors I have
found who directly refer to Achilles and Patroclus as pederastic. Xenophon, in his
Symopsium, argues through an interlocutor that Achilles’s rage at Patroclus’ death
should not be viewed as just a product of their shared bed, but also their
71
72
Xenephon 8.21-22
Plato 240C-E
65
comradeship.73 Xenophon’s underlying assumption is that most Greeks thought
Achilles’s rage over Patroclus’ death came from their pederastic relationship.
In the Symposium Plato writes that the Greeks thought Achilles and
Patroclus were pederastic, writing through his interlocutor Phaedrus, “Achilles,
son of Thetis…when he learned from his mother that he would die if he killed
Hector…dared to choose to go to his lover Patroclus’ aid and avenge him, and so
not merely to die for him but to add his own death to his.”74 Phaedrus adds,
“Aeschylus is talking nonsense when he claims that Achilles loved Patroclus,
because his beauty exceeded not only Patroclus’ but in fact that of all the heroes,
and he was still beardless, and also much younger, as Homer says.”75 Phaedrus is
arguing in this passage that love inspires honorable deeds, and so it is a safe
assumption that he would reach for common, axiomatic examples of couples to
prove his point. Achilles and Patroclus seem to satisfy that requirement. Moreover,
Phaedrus even mentions a claim made by Aeschylus that Achilles is the erastes and
Patroclus the eromenos. Though it is impossible to know which statement by
Aeschylus Plato, through Phaedrus, is referring to, Aeschylus fragments 135 and
136 from Myrmidons both imply that Achilles was an erastes to Patroclus’ eromenos.
Achilles, speaking to Patroclus’ dead body says:
Fragment 135: “And you did not respect the sacred honor of the thigh-bond,
ungrateful that you were for those countless kisses.”
73
Xenophon 8.31
Plato 179e1-180a5.
75
Ibid. 180a5-b5
74
66
Fragment 136: “And I honored the intimacy of your thighs by bewailing you.”76
Both “thigh-bond” and “thighs” refer to the same word “mērōn” (“thigh”), a
stand-in for intercrural sex, a common form of consummation in pederastic
relationships.77 Since the erastes penetrated the thighs of the eromenos, if Achilles
honors the intimacy of Patroclus’ thighs, then Achilles is being portrayed as the
erastes. Finally, in the speech Against Timarchus, [346 BCE] Aeschines bluntly states
that “the relationship between Patroclus and Achilles…we are told, had its source
in passion.” Moreover, Aeschines argues, as Phaedrus in Plato’s Symposium does,
that it was the love between Patroclus and Achilles that propelled Achilles to
avenge Hector and achieve undying glory.78
In summary, there is significant evidence to indicate that the Greeks saw
Achilles and Patroclus as a pederastic couple. The certainty that the Greek
audience felt in its interpretation of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus
is only equaled by the ambiguity of the text itself. The Iliad shows no definitive
proof of pederasty between Achilles and Patroclus, at least no explicit proof.79 The
standard mentor-pupil relationship is not present in the text.80 The two heroes are
76
Sommerstein 2008, 145
Ibid., Dover 1989, 96-99, 197. Also see Lear & Cantarella 2010 for images of
intercrural sex scenes in Greek vase artwork.
78
Against Timarchus 133 and 141ff
79
For a full treatment of pederasty between Achilles and Patroclus: Symonds 1873;
Percy 1996, 38-41; Boswell 1980, 47; Sergent 1986, 13; Halperin 1990, 75ff;
MacCary 1982, 127ff; Skinner 2005, 43-44; Patzer 1982, 93-95; Lear and
Cantarella 2010, 10-12.
80
Chiron, the centaur, is said to have been Achilles’ tutor when Achilles was a
child. Book 11.831
77
67
roughly the same age. Patroclus is slightly older, yet Achilles is by far the senior in
rank, fame, and honor. Courtship scenes of the type depicted on vases are absent
from the Iliad entirely. Finally, in a poem which incessantly recounts the personal
history of every combatant, no matter how trivial they may be, it would be strange
for a pederastic courtship between Achilles and Patroclus to go unmentioned. As
Percy writes, “We appear to be confronted by a social change that postdated the
development of the basic story of the Iliad and yet achieved such prominence in the
culture that readers of the poem willingly espied pederastic behavior in the chief of
the gods and in the revered of their heroes even though the epic text specified no
such thing.”81 If Percy is correct, and I think he is, then later pederastic Greek
culture is casting the Iliad into their own mindset.
Reception of Achilles and Patroclus Outside Ancient Greece
Far more briefly, I will now sketch out early modern European and modern
interpretations of the relationship of Achilles and Patroclus. From the medieval era
through the modern era, scholars generally censored Greek homosexuality entirely,
and, where unable to do so, severely downplayed it.82 Depictions in Europe of the
couple after 1300 are relatively few, but they paint a picture of camaraderie, not
sexuality. With the notable exception of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, the
poets of the 14th to 20th centuries assumed there was a heterosexual relationship
between the two characters. In the Historia destructionis Troiae, (1287) by Guido
81
82
Percy 1996, 42
See King 1987 for full treatment of Achilles in medieval era.
68
delle Colonne, Achilles and Patroclus’ relationship is presented as one of
friendship. In fact in Colonne’s account, Achilles returns to battle not out of grief
for the death of Patroclus, but because Agamemnon (written ‘Agamemon’) orders
him to kill Hector, an order which he, as a pseudo-vassal to his Lord Agamemnon,
faithfully obeys.83 The Seege of Troye and Troy Book (1420), anonymous and by John
Lydgate, respectively, follow the same pattern. However, until the arrival of the
Romantic era in Europe renewed interest in Homer and Ancient Greece, Europe
remained firmly Virgilian. While there are perhaps ten works which directly deal
with the Trojan War that are extant from the Medieval and Early Modern eras,
there are hundreds from the 1800s onward. In works such as the poem No Second
Troy by William Butler Yeats (1910), or the opera La belle Hélène by Jacques
Offenbach (1864), there is no hint of a sexuality between Achilles and Patroclus.
Beginning with Kassandra (1983), by Christa Wolf, many novels,
translations, and adaptations of the Iliad have made Achilles and Patroclus into a
modern gay couple of equals. Kassandra modernizes the story fully, making Achilles
a closeted gay man, afraid of openly loving Patroclus and losing the admiration of
his soldiers. The novels of Mary Renault, especially the King Must Die (1958), also
sexualize Achilles and Patroclus. Ransom, by David Malouf (2009) outlines the
relationship between the two as romantic, powerful, and sexual. However, the most
direct depiction of a homosexuality between Achilles and Patroclus is Madeline
Miller’s novel The Song of Achilles (2012). Explicitly advertised as a “romance,” it
83
Figure out these medieval citations.
69
tells the story of Patroclus and Achilles beginning with their shared childhood as
they slowly and falteringly fall in love with each other. They become a modern
relationship, gay relationship. The entire plot of the novel is about that bond. All of
these depictions of Achilles and Patroclus have been published over the last halfcentury, which is precisely the time when gay civil rights have expanded in the
United State.
There are roughly three interpretations of the Iliad that have been advanced
over the last two millennia: Achilles and Patroclus as a pederastic couple, as
brothers-in-arms, and as equal gay lovers. Each of these interpretations reflects
broad cultural consensus. The assumption within Classical Athens was that
Achilles and Patroclus had a pederastic relationship, while the medieval and early
modern world assumed they had a militaristic relationship. Now it is assumed that
Achilles and Patroclus are a homosexual couple.
Fish and the Interpretive Community
The best explanation for these interpretation, I believe, is given by Stanley
Fish in “Interpreting the Variorum.” I have made an assumption about the text of
the Iliad, which here I wish to refer to and show to be an unjustified assumption. I
have assumed that there is a relationship between Achilles and Patroclus which can
be encountered prior to interpreting that relationship; in doing so, and as my
writing in this chapter might revel to my reader, I am implicitly de-fictionalizing the
relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, attempting to make them into real
humans whose relationship can exist without a viewer. The Iliad, no matter how
majestic, cannot make that final jump beyond the textual. The Iliad is dependent
upon the reader to understand it. Fish writes:
70
The reader’s activities are regarded, not as leading to meaning, but as having
meaning. The meaning they have is a consequence of their not being empty;
for they include the making and revising of assumptions, the rendering and
regretting of judgments, the coming to and abandoning of conclusions….In
a word, these activities are interpretive…[and] a description of them will
also be, and without any additional step, an interpretation, not after the fact,
but of the fact (of experiencing).84
The claim that Fish makes is that by reading a text, the reader implicitly and
unavoidably interprets the text.85 Moreover, the very interpretation is, of itself,
indescribable except by the same process of interpretation by another reader. In
effect, readers of identical interpretive structures can understand each other
clearly, but readers with different interpretive structures always interpret each
other, and so cannot understand each other’s structures except through their own.
Readers with the same interpretive structures are said to be members of the same
interpretive community.86 Taken to its ultimate, solipsistic end, as Fish surely
intends to, this argument implies that there is no independent, verifiable meaning in
a given text, and that the interpretive communities alone determine the meaning of
the text. I would endorse that interpretation.
Skeptics might think to themselves that such an analysis is absurd, and that
even though the cultural beliefs of readers certainly influence a reader’s
understanding of a text, a reader should be able to recover the pure meaning of a
84
Fish 1976, 474
I will continue to use the word “reader,” but I do not mean to limit myself to
written texts. A “listener,” in this case, can be casually substituted for “reader” at
any stage of the present analysis.
86
The limits of the interpretive community (who is in it, who is not) are drawn like
the limits of a language: vaguely and without strong definitions.
85
71
work, unfiltered by a reader’s beliefs, by attempting to understand the linguistic,
social, psychological, political, literary, etc., merits of the work as it was given by
the author. Working through an English language example makes the question
simpler: apocryphally, King Charles II described the newly completed St. Paul’s
Cathedral as “artificial and awful.”87 A reader today, who is unversed in 17th
century English vocabulary, would conclude that King Charles II did not admire
the Cathedral. However, a reader knowledgeable about archaic vocabulary may
know that “artificial” could have meant “artistic,” and “awful” could have meant
“full of awe.” Moreover, since the Oxford English Dictionary can confirm that
those words held those definitions in the 17th century, my skeptic seems justified in
arguing that there is an informed reader and an uninformed reader, and that the
informed reader has a measurably superior understanding of the text compared to
the uninformed reader. However, an assumption, and a crucial assumption, has
been made by the informed reader: that King Charles II intended “artificial and
awful” to mean “artistic and full of awe.” The Oxford English Dictionary can only
prove that it can carry those two meanings, but the informed reader must make the
decision that King Charles II did mean that. In this small example, that decision
seems justified and unavoidable. But, and this is central to my point, in
understanding the quotation, both readers are making decisions about what the
intentions of the author of that quotation are, and the substantive difference
87
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/31/st-pauls-cathedral/. The example is still
useful even if there is no historical basis.
72
between the informed and uninformed reader stems from the evidence, beliefs, and
opinions that guide their interpretation of that authorial intention. These successive
decisions about the author’s intentions, collectively, amount to the reader’s attempt
at understanding the text.88 In summary then, “to describe that experience [of
reading a text] is to describe the reader’s efforts at understanding, and to describe
the reader’s efforts at understanding is to describe his realization (in two sense) of
an author’s intention.”89 In the case of vocabulary, the reader is limited to simpler
intention; in the case of literature, the reader looks at “the specifying of every
aspect of successively intended worlds,” which is to say, every aspect of a text.90
How does Fish’s understanding of the essential role that the reader has in
the formation of a text relate to the three different understandings of the
relationship between Achilles and Patroclus? Briefly, what each society thought of
as an acceptable form of male-male relationship affected and altered how its
readers experienced the text of the Iliad. Athens, with its approval of pederasty,
understands the poem as displaying the same pederasty. Early modern Europe,
with its armies and intense vassal-lord relationships, defines such relationships by
loyalty and camaraderie, so it understands the Poet’s intentions in the same way.
Today, as gay rights become more common and accepted in the Western world,
modern readers see such intimate relationships between men as gay and therefore
88
In the example of King Charles II’s vocabulary, these decisions come relatively
easily. In interpreting the Iliad, they are infinitely more difficult.
89
Fish 1976, 476
90
Ibid., 477
73
understand the poem that way too. Positivist, formalist, or independent
understandings of the relationship which do not refer to the reader of that
relationship do not appear to be possible.91 Instead, the beliefs which define an
interpretive community are filtered back through into the text of the Iliad.
Fish’s theory of the interpretative reader is easily transferable to a
discussion of translation of the Iliad. The translation itself is subject to Fish’s
analysis. Translating the Iliad utilizes the exact same “reading activities” which Fish
discusses, such as "making and revising of assumptions, the rendering and
regretting of judgments, the coming to and abandoning of conclusions.” The act of
translating, in this sense, is subject to the same theoretical concerns as the act of
reading. Translations of the Iliad can be seen as records of the translators’
interpretive structures. The Iliad by Peter Green, for example, is the story of the
Iliad but also a record, like an imprint from a seal, of the interpretive structures of
Peter Green and his interpretive community. It is not simply that Peter Green’s
translation reflects what Peter Green thinks of the story of the Iliad, though it
obviously does, but that Peter Green’s translation reflects the social, psychological,
cultural, etc., norms which govern how he experiences the text. In my previous
91
Rather than seeing a text and basing our understanding of that relationship on
the text, we do the opposite: “I ‘saw’ what my interpretive principles permitted or
directed me to see, and then I turned around and attributed what I had ‘seen’ to a
text and an intention. What my principles direct me to ‘see’ are readers performing
acts; the points which I find (or to be more precise, declare) those acts to have been
become (by a sleight of hand) demarcations in the text; those demarcations are then
available for the designation ‘formal feature,’ and as formal features they can be
(illegitimately) assigned the responsibility for producing the interpretation which in
fact produced them.” Ibid. 478.
74
chapter I discussed how translation can show a great deal about how the Iliad
works, but now, I wish to discuss the opposite trend: translation tells us a great
deal about the translator, and the culture, which made the translation.92
Translation Recording Interpretive Structures
My four translations represent Achilles and Patroclus on a spectrum from
militaristic, brothers-in-arms to homosexual love. Lattimore & Green’s translation
privileges loyalty, while Peterson & O’Hare indicate a romance between the two.
Logue is less definite, but the subtext present in many scenes allows a reader to
interpret their relationship as romantic. Each decision by the translators to
represent Achilles and Patroclus correlates to the cultural ethos of the time period,
the location where the translators were produced, or some other factor, which will
be provided as supporting evidence that the translation can be read as an accurate
reading of the translators and the culture of the translators themselves.93
Lattimore sketches out the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus in
Books 17, 18, and 23, through the dialogues and monologues of Achilles. Lattimore
characterizes their relationship as a close friendship but gives no indication of
romantic sensibilities (or pederastic sensibilities, for that matter) between them. In
Book 16, for example, Achilles says to Patroclus who is weeping, “Why then / are
92
Resolving the apparent paradox between these two effects will be discussed in
the conclusion.
93
In terms of my own methodology, I wish to avoid the impression that I am trying
to “guess” what is in the head of the translators. Instead, I wish to show why in the
New York theater environment, Peterson & O’Hare can and are far more willing
to interpret Achilles and Patroclus’s relationship as homosexual than Richmond
Lattimore, in 1950, was able to or willing to.
75
you crying like some poor little girl, Patroklos….You are like such a one,
Patroklos, dropping these soft tears.”94 Calling Patroclus, essentially, a little girl
does not preclude the possibility of romance between Achilles and Patroclus, but it
hardly sets it them up for a romantic relationship. Lattimore follows the same
pattern throughout his translation: he does not directly deny a romantic
relationship but Lattimore does not in any way imply one either. He only shows a
militaristic, soldier-to-solider bond. One of the passages most frequently
interpreted as romantic is 16.97-100, but Lattimore has translated it in such a way
to deny any definitive romance. Here, Achilles is finally allowing Patroclus to wear
his armor and lead the Myrmidons. Before he finally relents, Achilles says: “if only
/ not one of all the Trojans could escape destruction, not one / of the Argives, but
you and I could emerge from the slaughter / so that we two alone could break
Troy’s hallowed coronal.”95 Someone might argue against my position and say that
Lattimore is using coded language, hiding their romantic relationship. Such an
interpretation, however, has no basis in the text, and would be a supreme example
of a reader interposing their own opinion of the text. Moreover, since there exists
no other example in Lattimore’s Iliad of a homosexual relationship between
Achilles and Patroclus, there is no reason to read a subtle subtext into the
quotation. Rather, the quotation should be interpreted as one expressing a deep
94
95
Lattimore 2011, 351
Greek:
76
and meaningful heterosexual relationship. Lattimore does not give the reader any
reason to see them in any other light.
The next time Achilles speak to Patroclus seems to confirm that brothers-inarms mentality: “Rise up, illustrious Patroklos, rider of horses…Get on your armor;
faster; I will muster our people.”96 The descriptive phrase that Lattimore renders as
“illustrious” is diogenes, which appears 22 other times in the Iliad. In every example,
one hero is addressing another hero, and in 17 of those 22 usages, the hero being
addressed and the hero addressing is not Patroclus. The epithet appears, then, to
be a general one used in discourse between Homeric heroes. Lattimore translates
every instance of diogenes as “illustrious,” just as he does here in 16.126.
“Illustrious,” then, in Lattimore’s replicated formulaic language, is a word of
camaraderie, defined by its usage among the soldiers for other soldiers. It does not
have or confer upon Patroclus any special status beyond that of a fellow hero.
When Achilles learns of Patroclus’ death, Lattimore’s Achilles cries out “My
mother, all these things the Olympian brought to accomplishment. But what
pleasure is this to me, since my dear companion has perished, Patroklos, whom I
loved beyond all other companions, as well as my own life.”97 Lattimore repeats
“companion” twice, his translation of the word hetairos (“companion,” “friend”),
establishing Patroclus as one of Achilles’ companions, though Achilles “loved [him]
beyond all other[s].” The implication is that Patroclus was, essentially, Achilles’
96
97
Lattimore 2011, 354
Ibid., 398
77
best friend, but still just one of Achilles’ friends. Lattimore repeats the same
description of Patroclus soon after, as Achilles says “I was no light of safety to
Patroklos, nor to my other companions.”98 Their friendship, of course, is not a
minor relationship to either Achilles or Patroclus. When Thetis comes to find
Achilles after Patroclus has died, she finds “her beloved son lying in the arms of
Patroklos, crying shrill, and his companions in their numbers about him
mourned.”99 Lattimore’s translation of “crying shrill” closely links that passage with
the Ghost visitation scene in Book 23, when Achilles “could not [embrace] him, but
the spirit [of Patroclus] went underground, like vapor, crying shrill, and Achilleus
started awake, staring.”100 Here, Achilles tries to embrace Patroclus, but cannot
because Patroclus’ body is gone, and, until Achilles holds a proper funeral for his
soul, Patroclus cannot move on. Their unsuccessful embrace is not a reflection of
sexual desire but an indication of Patroclus’ death—his body is gone, and it will not
come back.
So what does Lattimore’s preference to show the relationship of Achilles
and Patroclus as a militaristic companionship tell the audience about the
interpretive structures under which Lattimore’s Iliad was made? Lattimore wrote
this translation in 1951, and the fruits of this inquiry will tell us something we
already know. Lattimore’s translation, a record of a preference for the militaristic
and the non-sexual over the romantic and the homosexual, is indicative of the time,
98
Ibid., 399
Ibid., 414
100
Ibid., 475
99
78
1951, right after World War II, and the translator himself, a veteran of the Navy in
World War II. Homosexuals would not be accepted as mentally or morally sound
individuals for decades, so homosexual romance or sex would have been
completely out of bounds for Lattimore to depict, even if he wanted to. I do not
mean to say here that Lattimore’s translation is just a ‘product of its time,’ because
that would put the cart before the horse; looking at 1951 and the history of
Lattimore cannot tell us anything about Lattimore’s translation, because any
number of factors which we cannot know about could have influenced Lattimore in
a way that would not be typical of 1951 (Lattimore could have had a hidden belief
that Achilles and Patroclus were gay, etc.). Rather, looking at Lattimore’s
translation gives us a record how the story of Achilles and Patroclus was
understood in 1951. The underlying interpretive structure which governs how
Lattimore receives the text of the Iliad is a product of the interpretive community to
which Lattimore belongs. Achilles and Patroclus, at least in the interpretive
community which Lattimore was a part of (American classicists, perhaps), appears
to have been received as heterosexual friendship.
Peterson & O’Hare and a Gay Achilles
Peterson & O’Hare depict a gay Achilles and Patroclus. In just one speech,
describing Achilles and Patroclus’ relationship, said by their Homer right before
Patroclus asks Achilles for his armor, Peterson & O’Hare give their image of the
couple:
Patroclus was Achilles’ friend. His only friend. They were boyhood friends.
Patroclus was sent by his own father to live with Achilles’ family—he’s
slightly older than Achilles, good with horses, and practical. His father said
to Patroclus: “It’s your duty to take care of Achilles. You’re wiser than he is.
Counsel him and he’ll listen to you.” And so Patroclus and Achilles were
79
more than friends, they were brothers. And really they were more than
brothers, they loved each other. When Achilles couldn’t sleep, Patroclus
would hold him—that kind of thing. Friends. (A sip of whiskey.)
The language used by Peterson & O’Hare here strongly implies that Achilles and
Patroclus were homosexuals by the final line, “When Achilles couldn’t sleep,
Patroclus would hold him—that kind of thing.” It is technically possible the
Peterson & O’Hare do not mean to imply a sexual relationship between Achilles
and Patroclus, but the language is coded in such a way to allow the audience to
easily picture that. Their language is not as explicit as, say, The Song of Achilles,
which includes explicit sexual scenes, but to interpret Peterson & O’Hare’s
Achilles and Patroclus as straight, militaristic figures seems more difficult. “That
kind of thing” gives Peterson & O’Hare’s audience just enough room to believe that
Achilles and Patroclus had a sexual relationship without seeming like Peterson &
O’Hare are altering the story. In the implied space which “that kind of thing”
makes, the audience can find a homosexual Achilles and Patroclus, and,
considering the obvious cryptic nature of the interruption, it seems clear that
Peterson & O’Hare want them to find that relationship there.
After this passage, the play quickly focuses on the impending conflict
between Achilles and Hector, making Patroclus’ death the catalyst for the battle
between Achilles and Hector. The next mention of the relationship between
Achilles and Patroclus is when Achilles is told that Patroclus died. There, Peterson
& O’Hare instead only preserve a few lines and then swiftly move on to the next
scene in the Iliad: “A black cloud of grief came shrouding over Achilles. Achilles
suddenly loosed a terrible, wrenching cry, and his noble mother heart him….He’s
80
dead. And I sent him out there. It should have been me. What do I do now?”
Thetis answers that Achilles will need new armaments, and then the poem goes on
to detail the Shield of Achilles and the final battle with Hector. They move on
quickly from Patroclus’ body towards vengeance. Afterwards, when the funeral
games for Patroclus take place in the original, which is nearly 900 lines of the
Greek text in Book 23, Peterson & O’Hare give only one line: “But Achilles’ fury
just won’t end…and so he drags Hector’s body round and round Patroclus’ tomb,
day after day after day. And the thing you have to ask yourself is: It’s been TEN
DAYS!!!!!! What’s there left to drag?” That paragraph is the only mention of
Patroclus after his death in the play, and even in that paragraph, Patroclus’s tomb
is only the setting where Achilles tries to mutilate Hector’s body. The focus of the
play, even here, is not on Achilles and Patroclus, but on Achilles and Hector.
So why is the focus placed so heavily on Achilles and Hector over Achilles
and Patroclus? In general, the attention of the play is on the battle between
Achilles and Hector, so Peterson & O’Hare want to show the audience the body’s
mutilation rather than change subjects entirely to Patroclus’ funeral games.101 By
allowing Achilles and Patroclus to have a romantic relationship, but then deemphasizing that relationship against the main story of Achilles and Hector,
Peterson & O’Hare are, in a sense, normalizing the relationship between Achilles
and Patroclus. The relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is only a part of
101
In a twenty-four book long poem, there is room for both, but, as I have said
before, in a play Peterson & O’Hare do not have the time to address as much as the
Iliad covers.
81
Achilles’ world-view—in short, Achilles is more than just a gay man in Peterson &
O’Hare, so Achilles, and the play, do not have to focus exclusively on his
homosexuality.
What does the play’s ability to imply that Achilles and Patroclus are gay
lovers say about the reception of the Iliad today? Almost certainly, An Iliad speaks
to how the audience of the Iliad is far more likely to receive the relationship
between Achilles and Patroclus as homosexual than the audience of Lattimore was.
Moreover, since the relationship itself is de-emphasized as only a part of Achilles’
worldview, the translation of Peterson & O’Hare also reflects a reception of the
acceptance of the homosexuality of Achilles and Patroclus, which is to say that
Achilles can be understood by today’s audience as the ultra-masculine while also
being understood as gay. This interpretation of the reception of Achilles and
Patroclus seems justified in the context with which the play was produced: a play
produced in Seattle and ultimately in New York can easily reflect a great
acceptance of gay rights, since these are two cities whose political views tend to be
more liberal. Moreover, theater-goers are, in general, a more liberal audience
today, especially towards LGBT acceptance. Whereas Lattimore, even if he wanted
to showcase a gay Achilles, could not have because of the time he lived in, the
liberal context of Peterson & O’Hare’s play affords greater leverage to what they
can showcase in their play. They appear to have been able to take advantage of that
reception.
Logue and Achilles’ Emotions
Logue articulates a sexual relationship between Achilles and Patroclus but
does not make it explicit. Logue is, of the four works discussed here, the most
82
violent and the most concentrated on violence, and, here too, the relationship
between Achilles and Patroclus is depicted as a harsh, brutal, intense love, which is
equaled only by the intensity of Achilles’ response to it. Book 23 was not translated
by Christopher Logue before his death, so I will analyze what is available, but it is
more than enough to show a different, modern take on Achilles and Patroclus.102
Beginning in Patrocleia, Logue’s translation of Book 16, Achilles, in a show
of friendship, asks Patroclus “Why tears, Patroclus?”103 ‘Why tears’ is a repeated
line-type in Logue’s translation, primarily used by Thetis to speak lovingly to
Achilles, such as in the beginning of the first book, when she says “Why tears,
Achilles? Rest in my arms and answer from your heart.”104105 When Achilles uses it
for Patroclus, he indicates a more familial relationship. Patroclus then asks Achilles
for his permission to lead the Myrmidons into battle and to borrow the armor of
Achilles to frighten the Trojans. Achilles responds, “O love, I am so glutted with
resentment that I ache.”106 Calling Patroclus “love,” indicates a homosocial
relationship, perhaps bordering into homosexual. Logue, throughout War Music,
keeps their relationship in that liminal zone between homosocial and homosexual.
102
Logue did leave a list of things which he felt must be translated before his
translation could be considered “complete.” Book 23 is one of them, so my analysis
must be understood as an analysis of only part of what Logue hoped to complete.
103
Logue 2016, 225
104
Ibid., 10
105
Later in Book 16, Hector twists that line as he kills Patroclus, “Putting his spear
through…ach, and saying: ‘Why tears, Patroclus?’” (248)
106
Ibid., 226
83
In doing so, Logue denies his reader a clean label to put on Achilles and
Patroclus. They cannot be called ‘boyfriends,’ or ‘lovers,’ or ‘friends,’ because
Logue denies the audience a simplistic view into their relationship. Instead, the
reader is confronted with the totality emotional bond between the two characters.
In the most evocative line of the scene when Achilles finally relents and gives
Patroclus his armor, Achilles tells Patroclus that he “would be glad if all the Greeks
lay dead / while you and I demolished Troy alone.”107 The quotation could be read
to indicate a deep friendship, homosocial bonding, or a homosexual relationship,
and Logue gives no indicators around it to clarify what the exact meaning of the
line is. It strikes me as romantic sub-text since Logue emphasizes “you and I”
instead of the simpler “we” and privileges “alone” as the last word of the line, but
the line is too vague to make an objective determination of the status of Achilles
and Patroclus from it. The only thing which the reader can be certain of is that
Achilles is indicating a close, closed off bond between him and Patroclus, even to
the exclusion of their fellow Greeks. In fact, when Achilles learns of Patroclus’
death, he experiences complete despair:
Down on your knees, Achilles. Further down.
Now forward on your hands and thrust your face into the filth,
Push filth into your open eyes, and howling, howling,
Sprawled howling, howling in the filth,
Ripping out locks of your long redcurrant-colored hair,
Towel up its dogshit with your mouth.
107
Ibid., 228
84
Achilles’s deep despair shows Logue’s audience the depth of Achilles feelings
towards Patroclus. The audience is not given a solid label to apply to their bond,
but must understand Achilles and Patroclus by the emotions they feel towards one
another.
Those emotions reach their highest point in a semi-erotic scene as Achilles
finds Patroclus’ body:
Achilles laved the flesh and pinned the wounds
And dressed the yellow hair and spread
Ointments from Thetis’ cave on every mark
Of what Patroclus was, and kissed its mouth,
And wet its face with tears, and kissed and kissed again,
And said: ‘My love, I swear you will not burn
Till Hector’s severed head is in my lap.’
Moreover, in Pax, Logue’s translation of Book 19, Thetis arrives with the Shield of
Achilles to find “Achilles // gripping the body of Patroclus / Naked and dead
against his own.”108 Taken together, these two passages demonstrate the confusing
and difficult to label relationship which Logue has written. The implication of
romance seems especially strong in the line “kissed and kissed again,” and that
sense of romance seems strengthened by the vocative “my love.” The specific body
imagery, “dressed the yellow hair,” “spread ointments,” “kissed its mouth,” “wet its
face with tears,” “gripping the body of Patroclus naked and dead against his own,”
all imply a physical intimacy. The imagery, however, is mixed with horror. Achilles
is dressing the dead body of Patroclus and promising to cut Hector’s head off. By
combining the sexuality of the scene with horror, the reader cannot easily label the
108
Ibid., 275-79
85
relationship of the two characters. A reader would be hard-pressed to say that they
are just friends, since the sexual imagery is too much for most friendships. Yet, a
reader would also have difficulty in giving them a homosexual relationship, since
the horror inherent to the scene makes it difficult to know if this outpouring by
Achilles was normal or simply a strange reaction to seeing his best friend dead.
Homosocial bonding also seems unlikely, since Achilles is dead and erotic bonding
between straight males is unnecessary. Instead, the reader, aware of the sexuality
of the scene but unable to define the scene by that sexuality, is left simply
understanding without labeling the powerful emotions felt by Achilles towards his
dead friend Patroclus. These two quotations are the last substantial mention of
Patroclus in War Music.
Logue, as always, presents an interesting case for the theoretical model that
I have been working with. War Music seems to me to show a more ambivalent
relationship than either Lattimore or Peterson & O’Hare. Logue implies a
homosexual relationship, or at least a strong homosocial bond between Achilles and
Patroclus. Moreover, the militaristic ties between them are less notable then in
Lattimore or Green. War Music, then, represents a reception of Achilles and
Patroclus’ relationship which suspects a homosexuality between them but does not
make it central aspect of their relationship. Instead, Logue defines them by the raw
emotions that they feel towards each other; the severity of Logue’s Achilles’
emotions is much greater than those of the other translations. Perhaps, Logue’s
translation shows a changing understanding of Achilles and Patroclus as brothersin-arms to Achilles and Patroclus as deeply emotional and invested in each other.
86
Logue’s middle ground between homosexuality and un-sexuality tracks
with the publishing history of his poem. War Music is a collection of smaller poems
which have been published over the last half-century, and Patrocleia, which
represents Book 16 of the Iliad, was the first published, in 1961. Yet the most
evocative and erotic passages quoted above were published throughout the 1970s
in G.B.H. and Pax. Perhaps, as homosexuality becomes more accepted from 1950
on, Logue represents a snapshot in that movement, the exact moment when deep,
pseudo-romantic emotions between men become acceptable to discuss but just
before those emotions can reflect an underlying homosexuality. Stuck in that state,
Logue’s translation represents not just a twenty-five-hundred-year old story, but
also a rapidly changing image of the modern world.
Peter Green and A Shift Back
Green’s translation represents the strongest and most militaristic of the
translations so far. Green not only ensures that his readers see Achilles and
Patroclus in strictly militaristic camaraderie, but he also excludes any possibility of
homosocial bonding, let alone any homosexual bonding.
From the very beginning of Book 16, the audience is shown the militaristic
relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. Achilles calls Patroclus a “a girl, a
small child…That’s what you’re like Patroklos, shedding those big round tears!”109
Like Lattimore before, Achilles’ insult does not promise any forthcoming romance.
After Patroclus asks Achilles if he can command the Myrmidons into battle,
109
Green 2015, 16.6-11
87
Achilles calls Patroklos “Zeus-born,” as a translation of diogenes (a wonderfully
etymologically accurate translation).110 As in Lattimore before, Green only uses
“Zeus-born” when one hero addresses another hero. In such a way, it becomes a
word defining relationships based around militaristic relationships. Even at the end
of Achilles’ speech, when Achilles finally relents and lets Patroclus take his
armaments and lead the Myrmidons, Achilles only says “How much I wish—Zeus,
Father, Athene, and Apollo!—/ That not one out of all the Trojans might escape
death, / nor a single Argive, but that only we two should not perish, / and together,
alone, should loosen Troy’s sacred diadem!” The emphasis is on the desire for
Achilles and Patroclus together to be alone from the rest of the Trojans and Greeks,
rather than for Achilles and Patroclus to be together, At Green has translated the
line, the emphasis seems to be on the death of all the Trojans and the Argives,
rather than on Achilles and Patroclus themselves.
Achilles’ mourning shows Green’s focus on militaristic bonding. After he is
told of Patroclus’ death, Achilles “gathered up the dark grimy dust, scattered it
over his head, befouled his handsome features, and on his fragrant tunic the black
ash settled.”111 The mourning ritual seems like a ritual, rather than an emotional
outpouring. Achilles does not “drench” or “pour” the black ash over his face, as he
does in Lattimore, nor does he “unleash a cry” like in Peterson & O’Hare, nor does
he “thrust [his] face into the filth” as he does in Logue. Instead, Achilles seems
110
111
Ibid., 16.49
Ibid., 18.22ff
88
measured in his mourning, like he is doing the proper rituals which must be done.
The same thing occurs after Achilles kills Hector and tells his men that they must
now “mourn [Patroklos]: this is a dead man’s privilege…So he spoke…three times
round the corpse they drove their fine-maned steeds, weeping, while Thetis stirred
in them an urge for lamentation.”112 Achilles, though he obviously cares deeply
about Patroclus, seems to be satisfying ritual, rather than massive emotional pain.
In fact, when Patroclus lays his “murdering hands upon his comrade’s breast,” he
does so upon his “comrade’s” breast, not his “friend,” not his “love’s,” not even his
“companion’s.” Green has chosen the most militaristic translation of hetairos
possible by translating it as “comrade,” and in doing so, forecloses any possible
romantic undertones. When Patroclus, in the dream, returns to Achilles as a ghost,
Achilles responds to him with the same epithet, “Why, dearest comrade, have you
come here to me thus?”113 Patroclus, in Green’s translation, is Achilles’ dearest
comrade, but only his “comrade.” Green has translated their relationship into the
military realm and completely outside the romantic.
Green’s reception of the Iliad is significantly different than many other
modern interpretations of Achilles and Patroclus. Peterson & O’Hare,
contemporaneous with Green, depict a far more sexual Achilles and Patroclus than
Green does. Green may even be less sexual than Lattimore. Peterson & O’Hare are
not scholars or classicists, and perhaps, in Green’s attempt to translate the text for
112
113
Ibid., 23.9-15
Ibid., 23.94
89
scholars and students, he has completely rejected the homosexual. Green, then,
might not so much represent a change in the reception of Achilles and Patroclus
but a dvision in an interpretive community. Taking Green and Peterson & O’Hare
together, it appears that the scholarly community rejects a homosexual relationship
between the two while the popular culture accepts it. Peter Green’s translation has
been out less than a year since the completion of this thesis. However, if
translations, as I have argued they are in this chapter, are a record of the reception
of a work in a time period, then Green’s translation represents, at least in the
academic interpretive community within which he writes, a dramatic shift back
towards the Lattimore militarism of Achilles and Patroclus. Whether that pattern
will continue, only time will tell.
90
Conclusions
I hope to have done three things in this thesis: first, a description of how
four notable translations have attempted to replicate the Iliad in English today.
Though a great deal of work has been done on reception of the Classical world,
with books published even exclusively on the reception of Homer, not nearly
enough has been published on translations of the Classical world.
Being separated by so much time and culture, translating from Ancient
Greek to English (or any modern language) is less about linguistic and conceptual
difficulties, though those certainly exist, and more about attempting to make art
work in an environment which it is wholly unaccustomed to be in. Achilles, were
he to be alive today, would be called a war lord, a rapist, a dictator, and a possibly
even guilty of genocide. In Ancient Greece, Achilles is a model of the struggle
against death, a courageous warrior representing the impossible fight against fate.
Translation is the process of bridging these, and many other, worldviews. I hope to
have shown in my second, third, and fourth chapters how translators accomplish
this goal.
I have made no overarching theory of translation to explain the technique of
translators. I hope to have offered here only a sketch of what techniques translators
have used and what those techniques tell us about translation, and about the Iliad.
But, as the last point to my thesis, I hope to have shown how those techniques by
translators reveal the implicit reception of the Iliad which those translators and the
culture which they are apart of hold. In such a way, I hope to bridge translation
and reception theory, ultimately with the goal of unifying them. Perhaps then, my
readers may appreciate and understand the art of translations just a bit better.
91
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